Span loads

What is a span? In SCIA Engineer a span means one of the following:

  • if a 1D member is defined by means of a polyline , the span is the segment between two adjacent vertices,
  • if a linked node (or several of these) is defined on a 1D member, the span is either (i) the segment between two adjacent linked nodes, or (ii) between a linked node and the adjacent end-node of the 1D member,
  • any combination of the above mentioned options.

It may happen that a 1D member extends over several spans, for example a continuous beam or a multi-span frame.

If you design such a type of structure, you may need to define a load that extends just over a single span.

To define the load over a span, you have the fill in the following parameters in the properties of a new line load (Line load on 1D) and set the extent to “span”:

Once a span-load is defined, it is stored as a normal load. This means that it can be manipulated the same way as any other load.