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Typical applications for distributed load assignments include snow load, buoyancy uplift, soil backfill load, live load, cable tray load, steam/heat tracing, and wind load. Although CSiPlant (and SAP2000) can automatically generate wind load as a function of height for piping and frame elements per ASCE 7, in some cases users may need to assign distributed loads if wind load needs to be applied using a different method.
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