User Guide

RISA-3D User’s Guide
Version 5.0
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What we’ve done is define a drawing grid with an initial X-increment for our
truss points of 3 ft followed by 4 equal increments of 3.75 ft each and a final
increment of 3 ft. Note the use of the “@” symbol to define a series of equal
increments. Our Y increments are set at the beam, the bottom chord and the top
chord.
Other things to notice here are that you may specify a radial grid and you may
save the grid layout to use in other models. You may also specify that the layout
should be the default grid layout each time the program starts up.
Click OK, which closes the dialog. Also close the Data Entry toolbar in the
upper right corner by clicking the Close button at the top of the toolbar to the
right of the title “Data Entry”.
Drawing Members
RISA-3D displays the coordinate location of the mouse in the lower right corner
of the status bar (you’ll see this when you start moving the mouse). These
coordinates are actually the coordinates of the graphic editing point closest to the
mouse (either a grid point or a joint location); you’ll see them change as you
move the mouse around. When you are in a drawing mode, graphical editing
points are highlighted by a red dot whenever the tip of your mouse cursor
passes over them.
We will provide sketches showing what is to be drawn, as well as dictating the
required operations in terms of grid coordinates. For your model to be the same
as that in this tutorial it is important to draw just as it is described in here. Watch
the coordinates display at the bottom right to make sure you’re moving to the
right location.