Reading a continuous beam without guessing the supports

Students often open a frame analysis package before they can sketch how a continuous beam wants to bend. At Meadowpath we delay that step.

Start with three equal spans and equal loads. Draw the deflected shape with inflection points roughly at the fifth points of the end spans. Mark negative moment over the internal supports. Only then write equilibrium equations or open a model.

In Foundations week seven we pin those sketches beside the calculated diagrams. When the shapes disagree, the maths usually hides a support settlement assumption or a missing load. The habit transfers to office work: a one-minute sketch before a computer run catches more errors than another decimal place in the output.