I am starting a Staad grillage model that will have lines of main and secondary beams but no slabs ie the there will be voids in the area bounded by the beams. For analysis I intend to put some patch loads in that voided space and wish to know if the program will transmit such patch loads to the structure. The examples of the Staad models that I have seen all have loads applied on nodes or beams lines only, not on the void space.

If anobody has applied this sort of patch loads successfully can you please let me know where I can find such example.

 

You probably want to use the Area Load or One-way Load specification for this (see help - contents - index - Area Load). Examples are included there.