Specifying grid loading

Grid loading is applied to grid surfaces which lie on a grid planes. Any number of grid loads can be applied to a grid surface. Note that the grid surface element list can be used to exclude elements that lie in the plane from consideration and thereby from the elements that attract load.

2D polylines are used to locate grid loads on the grid plane as follows.

• Grid point loads – When using the Sculpt > Create grid loading > Create grid point loads command a load is applied at each point on the current polyline.
• Grid line loads – The load line is defined by a reference to a 2D polyline. When using the Sculpt > Create grid loading > Create grid line load command a polyline is created from the current polyline (if an identical one does not already exist) and this 2D polyline is referred to.
• Grid area loads – The area is either defined as being the whole plane or as being bounded by a 2D polyline. When using the Sculpt > Create grid loading > Create grid area load command a polyline is created from the current polyline (if an identical one does not already exist) and this 2D polyline is referred to.

2D polylines can be set up either explicitly by entering the 2D polylines data in the 2D polylines table or graphically in the Polyline cursor mode. 2D polylines used for grid loading can be generally located. They do not need to align with elements. They can be wholly within panels or spanning several panels.

Having set up an appropriate 2D polyline the grid loading can be set up either explicitly by entering the grid point loads data, the grid line loads data or the grid area loads data in the grid loading table or graphically using the sculpt options for creating grid loading graphically.