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The steps for generating loads are:
1. For wind loads, select a Load Generation Method in the Design Settings.
2. Define building characteristics and site conditions in the Site Information dialog.
Enter the overall characteristics of the building, such as occupancy, enclosure, and fundamental period; and the climatological, topographic, and seismologic characteristics of the building site. The choices are dependent on the Load Generation Method chosen in Step 1.
3. Select load types and where on the building to apply them.
In the Load Generation view, select either or both of wind and seismic loads, and the building surfaces to apply them to.
Most often you will select all surfaces of the building. You can select a subset of the surfaces if you want to see the effect of these elements on the overall wind load before doing a final load generation and design.
3. Enter self-weights
For seismic loads, you will enter the self-weight of building elements to be used for generating building masses.
4. Enter manual building masses
If you have any contributions to seismic building mass that cannot be modeled by the standard Shearwalls building components, such as an air-conditioning unit, or an opening in the floor area you can model via a negative building mass, go to Load Input view and add these masses. Then return to Load Generation view to Generate the loads.
4. Generate loads
You can choose to add new loads to new building surfaces, or replace all your previously generated loads and regenerate.
It is possible to generate loads in stages, by selecting to generate loads on a single level or range of levels and generating several times. This way you can specify different component self-weights on each floor, to model for example a concrete floor on one level and wood floors on the rest.
The resulting loads have the same format as those entered manually and they can be viewed and modified in the Load Input window.
5. Display of Generated Loads
Only the generated loads combined on the building faces of the structure are displayed in Load Generate Action. You can view these loads combined with manually input loads when in Loads and Forces Action. In Load Input Form, you can see a list of all loads that were generated and manually input.
The Design Results shows a list of generated loads accumulated on the building faces, as you see in the Plan View screen. For wind loads, the Wind Load Generation Details output report show the more numerous loads that were applied to all the discrete building components that you see in the Load Input Form.