A local distributed load is a load which is distributed along all or part of the member and acts in a direction either normal (shear) or tangential (axial) to the member.

To apply a local distributed load to a member

§    Select the member or members to be loaded

§    Choose Local Dist'd Load from the Load menu or short cut menu

A dialog box will appear with icons to indicate the shape of the load and its direction relative to the member.

§    Click on the icon which shows the shape of the load

§    Click on the icon which shows the direction in which the load is to act

§    Type in values for the magnitude of the load at each end

§    Click on the OK button

There is no need to enter '+' or '-' signs for your load magnitudes.  The directions are determined from the icon that you select.

When you enter positions of loads in the member loading dialogs or the Data window, you can enter calculation expressions for the position.  For example, if you want a load to start at one third span you can enter L/3 for its start position.  If you enter this in a load dialog, this expression will be calculated for all the selected members.  This means you can apply this load to a number of members of different lengths simultaneously.  You can also enter more complicated expressions such as 2*L/3 or 1.35+(L-4)/2.  The variable L is always available and contains the length of the member, the syntax of the expressions is the same as that used in the CalcSheet.