I have a lot of piping systems that I need to include seismic design spectrums for dynamic load cases. I just took the dynamics class and I thought you could save the spectrum data to a file. If so, what is the format?

A step further, can I bring in the entire dynamic analysis block from one file to the other? If so, how?

I'm using 5.2 latest build.

A spectrum file is just two columns of numbers, separated by spaces. You can included comment lines, which begin with an asterisk. For example:

* FORCE SPECTRUM DATA FILE
* Jobname = RELIEF
* USER ENTERED TIME HISTORY
* TIME(milliseconds) FORCE(lb.)
* .00000 .00
* 8.00000 1281.00
* 1000.00000 1281.00
* 1015.00000 .00
* FREQ (HZ) MULTIPLIER
.0002500 .0012381
.0040000 .0251166
.0202500 .1276473
.0640000 .4008040
.1562500 .9458170
.3239999 1.7056760
.6002498 1.9999620
1.0240000 1.9998900
1.6402490 1.9997170
2.4999990 1.9993420
3.6602490 1.9985900
5.1839990 1.9971730
7.1402490 1.9946410
9.6040000 1.9903180
12.6562500 1.9832220
16.3840100 1.9719790
20.8802600 1.9547290
26.2440100 1.9290520
32.5802700 1.8919400
40.0000200 1.8398680

To bring in the entire dynamic analysis block from one file to the other you can just copy the _7 file from one job to another.

Thanks Rich. I'll give both a whirl.