When performing thermal expansion analysis, temperature loads are specified by entering a temperature and a reference temperature in a thermal expansion subnode which is available from the context menu (right-click the parent node, a Linear Elastic Material node, for example) or from the Physics toolbar, Attributes menu. Enter a constant temperature or an analytic expression that can depend on the coordinates or dependent variables. For beams, plates, and shells it is also possible to specify bending temperature loads. More details are available in the descriptions for each physics interface.

When a separate physics interface is used to model heat transfer in the material, the entry for the temperature is the dependent variable for the temperature from that physics interface, typically T. In most cases, possible temperature variables from other physics interfaces can be directly selected from a list.