Python in Structural Engineering: Arbitrary load on a beam

Structural engineers like things to be rectilinear. Clients sometimes do not. What if you have a load with a complicated shape on your beam? Is it conservative to "smear" the load as a uniform distributed load? How would you know? What if knowing made the difference between winning a client and losing a client? As far as I know, there is no published solution for this problem (let me know if I am wrong and provide a link to the solution in the comments below). This video walks through an implementation for a general algorithm for solving the load shape and magnitudes for an arbitrarily shaped load on a beam. The algorithm has been included in the open-source library, papermodels, and is usable on its own for solving your own beam loading problems. Streamlit demo application: https://structuralpython-load-distrib... GitHub Repos: https://github.com/StructuralPythonVi... https://github.com/StructuralPython/p... Want to learn Python for structural engineering? https://structuralpython.com Music credits: All music by William Claeson Licensed from Epidemic Sound Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction: The Fancy Planter 00:46 - Thinking through the solution 02:55 - Starting point: Four shapes + Overlap regions 05:52 - Dealing with void regions 07:40 - From Overlap regions to Singularity functions 12:01 - From Singularity functions to distributed loads 13:08 - Streamlit app: Distributed load from planter 14:38 - How you land the job! 15:12 - Random polygon examples 15:56 - The bigger picture 16:24 - Unsolved? 16:44 - Outro: StructuralPython training