Desing Advise for Newbie

Hi,

I am writing an application that will analyse continuous beams. I would appreciate advise on how to design the interface. The structure data is to be created via graphic entities (beams, joints, loads ) as opposed to table formatted data. These entities would be placed via drag and drop to create a continuous beam and would look similar to the following

                                         ||||||||||||||||||                    ----  uniform load applied to interior span

                      _^-----------_^--------_^------------_^ ---- structure (beams and joints)

My first attempt was to create the individual beams, support conditions and loads as "movable" controls. That does not seem to work well or at least I have not figured out how to accomplish that feat. Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks

Ron Modesitt