I am looking at a steel plate (2 plates flat to each other) design that has loading along the plane of the plates via a hook shape (in-plane) at each end and hold points at the middle. It is also loaded perpendicular to the plane at approximately mid span. Just to make things a bit harder one end of the pair will be touching whilst the other end of the pair will be held apart.

This is a one off job with very little likely hood of being repeated again. I need to find a reasonable FE analysis package or plate design software that can handle the loads at 4 points in-plane and two points perpendicular to the plane. Reasonable as in either free or sufficiently cheap.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

sc