Need help reading results

I understand your position. What I am saying is I think you have been given very incomplete guidance from the engineer that left. And your question indicates that the guidance given was 1. in error and 2. will get you in a lot of trouble. If all you needed to do to determine stiffness was to place one Newton of force (either total or per foot) don't you think SolidWorks would simply have a button indicating "Check Stiffness", you select that button and the stiffness is determined? In reality stiffness is a very relative to the situation and a number of factors. The metal staircase you walk up on the way to work is very stiff if you place 1 Newton of force on it. If you place say 50N over the side beam it may still be stiff, but if you place the 50N in the middle of the step it will not be anywhere near as stiff and will deflect. If you place 1000N anywhere on the stairs it will in all likely hood not only not be stiff but will collapse from the load.  Another example would be if you took a steel bar 1/2" thick and 5" wide and placed it between two tables. If the bar is only 8" long it will be very stiff and easily resist deflection with a load of one Newton. However make the same bar 20 feet long and place the same load in center of the bar and the bar of the same thickness and width will certainly deflect indicating less stiffness. Does that make sense?

     There is no way we can tell you to place one Newton total load or one Newton per foot because we have no idea what the use of the item you showed us nor the amount of load that it will be seeing. However your asking this question tells me that you need to gain a much better understanding of what deflection or stiffness is and what causes it before tackling this project. I am not saying only you are incapable of doing this job, but you are with your current understanding of what defines or determines stiffness and you need more training than just having some idiot on the net saying "1 Newton per foot".

Alex Dring wrote:

 

I am not going to tell my boss no or leave the company because I am asked to take on more responsibility. Am I going to get training? Of course I am, but I need to start learning it right now.

I admire your willingness to take on more responsibility, but asking you to do this project at the moment is akin to having someone tell you "Pull this stick to make the plane fly up and push it in to fly down, Now go fly that jet airplane".

Maybe there is a reason the engineer is no longer with your company.

Hi Alex,

sorry did not mean to be discouraging, like Jim I too applaud your efforts to make progress. However, I personally don't have the time to go back so far into the basics to bring you along. it would just be too onerous to do so over this sort of facility. Others maybe willing to provide more fundamental guidance. If can provide short snipets of help I will. You need a basic mechanics of material book at the very least - try Mechanics of Materials by Popov or something similar. You need to understand the basics of elastic theory and this book can help. Good luck.