Sorry, I didn't see the topic was for Discovery and SpaceClaim. I was thinking you were using Mechanical, and I was thinking about a compression-only support or elastic support in Mechanical. But even these will not allow assignment to a beam. An elastic support is like having a spring on each surface element connected in the normal direction. So in Mechanical I could probably connect a body-ground spring to the beam and set to deformable. But Discovery does't let you scope a spring to a beam, and it has no elastic support or compression-only support types. I am not an expert with Discovery but it looks like the only way it to create a body to act as the ground and use a contact. The material stiffness will provide the elastic support.
You are navigating away from the AIS Discovery experience