Structural Member Sizing

[Jay_on_Cape]

@ Jay: These projects were panelized construction method and TY for the lead. You have some very nice homes on your website.

National does panels as well. Here at the builder I work for we panelize our homes in our shop. It is interesting at times..

[tahoebrian5]

Kind of an old thread, but if you are still interested..

With the new asce 7-10, wind loads are extremely complex. I usually take the easy way out and use the simplified method in the code because seismic controls mostly due to the high snow loads here. Unless you are doing an analysis for submittal, I don't recommend it unless you enjoy torturing yourself. I'm in 130mph, and 30psf is a pretty safe assumption for most cases.

For vertical design of joists and beams excell works pretty darn well. If you could get chief to spit out spans and spacings, it would be pretty easy to import them into excell, and then you would also be able to peruse the results as well. That could be a good thing.

[CastleRockDev]

Has anyone come up with a way to calculate the wind shear load in x7?  I do not do the calculations for a tall wall and usually have the roof and floor truss engineers confirm pretty much what I already know, but would be nice if there was a way in chief to calculate for me to avoid paying someone else to do.

 

Or is there another program that I can pull plan into and have it calculated?

[DRAWZILLA]

Not in Chief at this time. there are lots of separate programs to calc. shear

[RGWhite]

Has anyone tried "American Forest and Paper Products Asociation" software?  http://cwc.ca/woodworks-software/us-edition/