Static structural – setting up new coordinate system in bending moment diagram

- May 23, 2025 at 1:03 pm
  
  akoserdos8
  Subscriber
  
  Dear Engineers/Students,
  I just started using ANSYS, and I'm trying to draw the shear-bending moment diagram. However, ANSYS uses a different sign convention than we do at university. I defined a new coordinate system which matches my needs, but I can't seem to set it up in the shear-bending moment diagram menu. All I can see is the global coordinate system. Any idea how to fix this problem?
- May 28, 2025 at 3:44 pm
  
  dlooman
  Ansys Employee
  
  The directional shear-moment diagram is in the "Solution" coordinate system. The Solution coordinate system is the element coordinate system specified for the line bodies. I tried specifying an inverted element coordinate system in the Details for the line bodies, but it did change the element coordinate system based on an Element Triad display. It seems you won't be able to display the shear-moment diagram with the convention you want in the Mechanical gui. APDL is more flexible in this regard and the PLLS command can be used to plot a negative value for the ETABLE items SMISC 3 and 16. If you're interested in creating an APDL POST1 moment diagram using a commands object I can provide you with the specifics.