The Spline Modeler is pretty easy to use for this. You just have to make sure that your cross section is centered after you draw it and then enable Pipeline extrusion method and draw.

The ribs in this sample are done with a displacement map that matches the texture map. The nice thing about using the Spline modeler is that it automatically UV maps the surface along the extrusion path making something like this easy to do - no complicated mapping after the object is generated.