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The steps for generating loads are:
1. Select design method.
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. Enter supported dead loads.
For dead loads, for each wall or shear line, enter the dead load per unit foot supported by the wall in Wall Input view.
4. Select load types to generate.
In Load Generation view, select load types and where on the building to apply them. Select any or all of wind, seismic, and dead loads.
For wind loads you can select 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.
For seismic loads, you can choose to create building masses for walls roofs, floors, and/or upper level ceiling.
For dead loads you can choose to generate the self-weight of the walls and/or the load supported by the wall as input in Wall Input view
5. Enter self-weights
For seismic loads, you will enter the self-weight of building elements to be used for generating building masses. For walls, if you have chosen to generate dead loads for overturning calculations, the wall self-weight will be used for that purpose as well. Floor and roof self weights are not used for dead load generation, they must be entered manually on the wall or shear lines in Wall Input view.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Display of generated loads
Only the generated loads are displayed in Load Generate Action. You can view these loads combined with manually input loads when in Loads and Forces Action. To reduce clutter, coextensive loads are combined in the drawing.
The program also displays the floor area elements that were created to generate building masses, and the building masses themselves.
In Load Input form, you can see a list of all loads that were generated.
9. Review building masses and regenerate
For complicated structures, such as those with blocks that overlap or with blocks with different numbers of levels, there may be redundant building masses or masses that do not model the structure with complete accuracy. In that case, you should examine the building masses created and go to Load Input view and modify the extents, delete some of them, or add new ones if necessary. Then you return to Load Generate view, and regenerate seismic loads with the box Generate seismic loads only, not building masses checked.
10. Add manual wind loads
Go to Load Input view to add any wind loads that could not be generated by Shearwalls, such as the load on a parapet.
It is not recommended to add manual seismic loads - see Seismic Loads.
11. Run design
The Design Results show 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 shows the pressures and other factors that were applied to all the discrete building components that you see in the Load Input form.