Plotting Options

There are many ways of viewing structural response in terms of plots using Dr. Frame2D. The figures below show some typical cases in which moments, shears, and displacements are being plotted dynamically:

Displaced shape and moment and shear plotting is enabled via the Plots menu:

There are different sign conventions for moments in different countries and contexts--by default Dr. Frame2D plots moments on the compression face of members, but this can be changed via the Plot Scales section of the model pane inspector table:

Changing the sign of the Moment Scale will change the sign of the moment plotting.

Current preference settings can be saved so that your preferred sign convention will become the default by selecting the Preferences... command in the Edit menu.

To find out more about how values can be labeled, see the section Working with Labels.

Displacement plotting is most easily turned off and on by typing the 'u' key, or one can use the Plots>Show Displaced Shape command (with cmd/ctrl-U short-cut).

In addition to plotting absolute quantities, one can plot values as a percentage of the member's capacity:

See the Design section for more details on the plotting of capacity values.

To toggle this feature, use the Normalize Values command in the Modeling menu.

Rescaling and Relocating

Due to the nature of real-time modeling, manual adjustment of plot scales is important. There are various controls on the scaling portion of the toolbar that dynamically rescale plots:

Simply click and hold down the desired control button, and the relevant plots will rescale dynamically.

The same plot scales are used for depicting internal and applied forces and moments.

Plots can also be rescaled via the plot scale dialog described above, but this is relatively inconvenient. However, if one is trying to compare plots in different windows visually, using the dialog is the only way to ensure that the plots are using the same scale.

An Example

Dr. Frame generally will draw auxiliary diagrams to the right or below the main structure by default according to the aspect ratio of the structure. For structures you create from scratch, this may not always work so well, but it is easy to drag any auxiliary plot to a new location. The figure below illustrates the relocating of a beam moment diagram, which is accomplished using the Pan Tool by shift clicking near the center of the auxiliary diagram, and then dragging (while keeping the shift key down) the plot to the desired location.

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