Hi,
As the topic title states, I'm trying to model COMPRESSION-ONLY springs and read in the manual that where the applied force is in the direction of the springs (i.e causing tension) the affected springs are considered invalid. I read on and realised that the all 3 directions (X, Y and Z) are considered invalid even though the tension is in say the Z direction.
Obviously this will cause the model to assume there is no spring/support at that location. This causes my model to become unstable. Within the manual, I also realised that to make use of the COMPRESSION-ONLY springs correctly, I should model the loads as REPEAT LOADS.
Unfortunately I am not familiar with the REPEAT LOADS function and tried to mess around with the editior to apply this function as per the manual. But I do not seem to get the correct result because I still get a whole load of warnings basically trying to say my structure is unstable and will explode! Serious, my deflections are measured in the meters!
Help please required for a a dumbass novice here. Any suggestion is better than no ideas. Thanks