Draw Special Joint

In building a model in SAP2000, it is not necessary to pre-define joints. The joints are automatically added to the ends or corners of objects. Special Joints are those joints added by the user. Adding joints may be necessary in rare cases, such as at one end of an NLLink Element - an end where there is no other object present and hence no automatically generated joint.

Add a special joint in a 2-D View as follows:

Click the View menu > Show Grids command to turn the grids on if they are not already on.
Use the View menu > Set 2-D View command to set the active window to select the plane in which the joint is to be added.
Click the Draw Special Joint button or the Draw menu > Draw Special Joint command to display the Properties of Object form and switch to Add Special Joint mode. Use the form to specify any offset (X, Y, or Z).
Click on a grid intersection or any other point in that plane to add a joint.

Add a special joint in a 3-D View as follows:

Click the View menu > Show Grids command to turn the grids on if they are not already on.
Click the Draw Special Joint button or the Draw menu > Draw Special Joint command to display the Properties of Object form and to switch to Add Special Joint mode. Use the form to specify any offset (X, Y, or Z).
In the 3-D view, click on a grid intersection to add a joint.

Note: The joints may be added only at grid intersections in 3-D view.

Right click on a joint to open the Point Information form. Use the form to edit the joint location to place it precisely in the desired location. Also, double left clicking in the white cell associated with the Special Joint item accesses a message form that can be used to specify that the joint be flagged as a Special Joint (selected the Yes button), or not (select the No button).

Also, unlike program-generated joints, a special joint is not deleted if the other objects connected to the joint are deleted. That is, it is possible for a special joint to be located "in mid air" if the surrounding objects are deleted without also deleting the special joint.

Example: Use of this command is demonstrated in Problem E and Problem Y.