Hey Panther -
Sorry for the slow response. I was "unplugged" for a week during thankgiving vacation. In response to your questions:
1) Yes, of course moving loads can be combined with other loads. You do this in the Load Combinations spreadsheet. First tell the program what loads are applied to the structure (DL, LL, EL, WL, et cetera). Then add in the moving loads (which will always be called M1, M2, M3, et cetera). Applied load factors to each and solve your load combination .
2) When RISA solves for moving loads, the program internally performs an envelope solution... running the moving load at each load step along its path. The the program presents the maximum and minimuum results for forces, deflections and such. This was just the most straight forward implementation for the moving load feature. Made a lot of sense back in the 90's when this was first implemented.
The program does not have a way to combine envelope and batch results display. The spreadsheets, force diagrams and such display differently depending on what type of solution you have solved. So, this would not be an easy thing to add / change. So, for now moving loads will still be limited to batch solutions..... However, we will soon be expanding the amount of information that we give with moving loads to include the moving load location which corresponds to the reported max or min values.
