The Keyboard Mode Coordinate Entry feature provides a means of entering coordinates of elements and entities directly. This feature is available in conjunction with several other commands, and allows the user to add the element graphically by clicking on a node with the cursor or by entering the desired coordinates. In these commands the user can go back and forth between graphical mode and keyboard mode. This is especially convenient when there currently is no node at the desired point.

While the cursor is moving about the screen, the cursor coordinates are tracked and shown in the X and Y edit boxes, but any value can be entered by the user. After a node has been selected for the current command, the coordinates of that point are listed as “Previous Point” or “Previous Vertex”. This is for reference.

The new point can be specified as either an absolute coordinate or as a relative coordinate. If Absolute is selected, the point will be given the coordinate specified. If Relative is selected, the point will be given the coordinate determined by adding or subtracting the X or Y value from the corresponding value of the coordinates of the “Previous Point” listed. That is, the value of X and/or Y specified by the user is taken to be the offset from the “Previous Point”.

An example of the use of this feature is modeling a surface load in a corridor where no grids coincide with the vertices of the load polygon. Instead of modeling grids at each vertex to enter the load by snapping to the grids, which is rather tedious, vertex coordinates may be entered directly with this feature.