Roger, as far as the command itself, use the "Spec" tab under the "General" tab on the left side of the screen. This is faster than going through the Command pull-down IMHO. Also, there are tricks you can use to speed things up. For instance, if you wanted to apply the same release to both ends of a bunch of members you can pick the members. Then go to General>Spec>Beam and assign the releases you want to the start of the members. Then with the beams still picked (highlighted) pick beam>release again, give it the same releases except now at the end, then hit assign. That way you only had to pick a group of beams once for two assignments.
Really, selecting beams in a complex structure is the time consuming part. There are a lot of tricks you can use when selecting beams to speed things up. Pull down the select menu and look over the choices. You can also isolate parts of the structure by using the "New view" command. Right click with members to selected to see this. With some practice you will get better selecting members quickly.
