Apply an offset to beam elements when the lines comprising the beams cannot be drawn where the neutral axis is actually located. Offset the beam the appropriate distance and in the appropriate direction to have the beam properties represented at the correct neutral axis location. The image below shows how the processor sees the beam elements with beam offsets applied.
For example, to attach a beam to a plate so that they are properly connected and the forces are transferred between them, the nodes of the beam elements must be coincident with those of the plates. Without an offset, this means that the neutral axis of the beam will be at the midplane of the plate. In reality the neutral axis of the beam is not located there. This is when an offset must be applied to properly model the assembly. For this example, the neutral axis of the beam should be located at an offset distance equal to half the height of the beam plus half the thickness of the plate.
Apply Offsets
If you select one or more beam elements using the Selection 
Select Lines command and right-click in the display area, you can select the Add pull-out menu and choose the Beam Offsets command to add an offset to each beam element. This command can also be accesed via the ribbon (Setup Beam Loads Beam Offset).
Specify the component of the offset in each global direction in the I Node and J Node sections. The buttons below can be used to set the offsets to certain values.
Visibility Object Visibility Element Axis commands. If axis 1 needs to be reversed for some elements, this can be done by selecting the elements (Selection Select Lines), right-clicking, and choosing Beam Orientations Invert I and J Nodes.