Hello, I have what I hope is a basic question.

I am running Caesar 5.20, and as part of my initial input, I would like to apply properties to multiple elements in the model. (I'm not referring to the 'sticky properties', such as material or fluid weight, which propogate automatically)

Say I have 30 elements in my model, and I want to apply a +Y restraint to elements 3-15. How do I do that?

You can't do that.

What you can do (depending on the model) though is initially code 3-15 as a single element, then use the "Break" option to break that into a series of equal length elements. The "Break" option lets you reference a restraint condition at an existing node, and apply that to all the new nodes generated during the break operation.

Ok. Thanks for the input.

To follow up, is there any 'power-user' way to manipulate Caesar input files? I have worked with the data matrix and neutral file commands, and they have decent functionality.

But I am hoping for more. Is the input file in a general database format, one that you could use generic sql calls or etc to manipulate the data?

I'm hoping there is some way to do simple data entry tasks, (like apply restraints to a number of nodes at once)

The CAESAR II files are not "database files", but rather flat binary files. There is no facility to perform the manipulations you describe.