The engineer can assign horizontal braces and vertical braces to behave as tension-only members by selecting the Assign – Horizontal Brace – Tension-Only or Assign - Brace - Tension-Only commands respectively. When braces are assigned as tension-only, the analysis is performed iteratively to ensure that those braces do not carry any compressive forces.

Tension-only members can be indicated on screen through the View-Members Command by selecting the Label – Tension Only option in the Brace or Horizontal Brace tab.

See Additional Load Cases Generated for Analysis with Tension-Only Members for information on creating Tension-only Load Cases and Boundary Conditions for technical information on tension-only analysis.