Hi Stephen,
thanks so far, this answered my questions.
Regarding your answer #2 my doubt is the following:
actually you do support this already for all the beam and layered/continuous shell sections (SECTYPE,...,SHELL) by exporting the temperature table MPTEMP,...,TEMP1,TEMP2,etc. This could lead to errors, e.g. the shell section has a constant Young's modulus for all temperatures while the adjacent beam changes stiffness or thermal expansion coefficient with varying temperature. Additional "phantom stress" would occur.
Jan