T.2 Viewing the deflection diagram

Select the Displacement page in Postprocessing page control bar.

Tip: This page is the default page when you open the Postprocessing workflow.

Note: You can display the Deflection diagram on most results pages by selecting the Deflection tool

. The tool remains depressed when the displacement is displayed.

The displacement diagram is drawn on the structure. The Node Displacements table and Beam Relative Displacement Detail table open. See T.2 The Node Displacements Table for details on these tables.

(Optional) If the deflection is not exaggerated enough to clearly identify, you can change the scale:

On the Results ribbon tab, select the Scale tool in the Configuration group.

The Diagrams dialog opens displaying the Scales tab.

Tip: You can also open the Diagrams dialog by selecting the Structure tool or by right-clicking in the View area and then selecting Structure Diagrams from the pop-up menu.
Change the Displacement value.
Tip: Smaller numbers exaggerate the deflected shape.
Type a value of 5 (mm per m) to clearly see the deflection due to load case 5.
Click Apply.
Tip: You can set the Apply Immediately option on this tab to view the scale change as you use the up/down arrows in the Displacement field.
Click OK.

To change the load case being displayed, select from the current Load list in the window status bar.

Tip: Alternatively, select the Structure tool

in the Configuration group on the Results toolbar. The active load case can be selected on the Load and Results tab in the Diagrams dialog.

The results displayed are for the selected load case only.

Select 5: DEAD + WIND for this tutorial.

Annotate the deflection at specific nodes:

On the Results ribbon tab, select the Annotate tool in the Configuration group.

The Annotation dialog opens.
On the Ranges tab, select the Ranges option and then type 2 3 6 (spaced node number list) in the Nodes field.
Select the Node tab and then check the Resultant option.
Resultant stands for the square root of sum of squares of values of X, Y and Z displacements.
Click Annotate and then click Close.
The structure deflection diagram is annotated for load case 5, as in the following figure.

Change the display units for displacement: The units in which displacement values are displayed in the post-processing mode are referred to as the display units.

On the File ribbon tab, select Display Options on the Settings tab.
The Options dialog opens.
Select the Structure Units tab.
Change Displacement selection from mm (millimeter) to cm (centimeter).
Click OK.
The diagram will be updated to reflect the new units.