Diagram Plot Attributes

PROJECTION Using "local" or "screen" projection for diagram plots

By default those data components which imply a local direction (i.e. shear and bending in/about beam local Y and Z axes) are drawn in "diagram" plots projected onto their "local" plane. For example in the left hand side of the figure above the bending moment Mzz is shown projected onto the plane of beam local XY. (The beam local axes have been turned on for clarity.) This gives a visual indication of the direction and sign of the component.

You can choose instead to project results onto the "screen" plane, as shown in the right hand side of the figure above. This draws results in the plane of the screen regardless of the beam's orientation. This mode of display is used unconditionally for components that do not have an implicit direction (e.g. axial force, torsion, etc)

DIAGRAM SIZE Setting the visual scale of diagram plots

The size of diagram plots is set by default such that the largest vector is about 500 screen units. You can change this at will: the figure above shows typical settings.

HATCHING Setting the density of diagram plot hatching

The size of diagram plots is set by default such that the largest vector is about 500 screen units. You can change this at will: the figure above shows typical settings.

Note: A "solid" diagram plot appearance can be achieved by reducing the hatching spacing to typically 10 units or below. The actual value will depend on the screen window size and device resolution. It requires a lot of screen vectors to achieve this effect, so don't use it where display speed or storage space are critical: e.g. during animation.