In this paper, the well-known Mohr analogy is applied to the computation of displacements and rotations of carbon nanotubes, and some simple formula is derived which allows the direct generalization of the Mohr theory to the nonlocal Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories. Finally, some examples show the effectiveness and simplicity of the proposed approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.