Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I am using beam/column calculator in the frame generator in inventor 2010 suite.

I have a beam being used for a flight of stairs it is positioned 40 deg above the 'floor' or my xy plane in my assembly.

I want to place a distributed load acting as if there were several people stading on the stairs at one time so in the direction of the z axis of my assembly.

The problem I am having is I try to change the angle of the distributed load but it only allows me to change the x and y components of the load. You can see this in the screenshots i took.  

Is there a way I can:

a) change the angle of the laod in the Z directions

or

b) change the cordinates in beam itself so the x axis is along the length of the beam instead of the z axis.

I have tried adding a UCS to the beam part but it still wants to choose the length of the beam as the z axis.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Matt

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure what all of the options are in the beam calculator, but you could do this by splitting your load into a Y component and an axial load component (Z component).  So in effect, you will have two loads applied.  One for the vertical Y component of the total load, and an axial load for the Z component.  Does that make sense?

[#3]

Select/Check the Vector box in the Load dialogue box. You can then enter in your load vectors, or create a work axis and use it for load direction. I believe you can even use a Work-Axis to define the load direction (still need to "Check") the vector box.

Sorry, I was thinking of either analysis in model or frame-gen.

[#4]

There is no vector box to 'check' i think that is a feature of the stress analysis found in the 2010 pro version, which i unfortunately do not have. I am using the beam/column calculator found in the frame generator feature of the 2010 suite version.

[#5]

This will work, i just was hoping to avoid breaking up my applied load into axial and shearing loads, i know that is lazy of me, thanks for the help!

Matt

[#6]

Good information, thanks for sharing.