Wood Building Seismic Design - who does it?

[jvvse]

I'm curious who does wood building seismic design.

Also, the real reason I'm asking, is how do you do it? Do you do it by hand or with a program?

 

[Archie264]

Interesting, thanks. And I suppose with a light frame structure the W portion is, well, light. Separately, .4W ... wow ...

 

[LonnieP]

If you have a rectangular structure - wind may goven in one direction and seismic, the other direction. Gotta check both to keep the plan checker from handing you a surprise.

LonnieP

 

[jvvse]

KootK, did you edit that post? I swear I never saw it before today. Dunno how it slipped through this conversation.

I was looking for someone else who used WoodWorks! Do you use it for the rigid diaphragm analysis or another reason, instead of just spreadsheets or hand calcs?

Tedious and rigorous do not sound appealing to me. Especially in wood design there is so much redundancy and I guess we can call it complexity with all the construction materials that it's very hard to analyze it accurately. As engineers we are able to make judgments on how to do our analysis. The simplest way is to make conservative judgments to reduce the need for tedious or rigorous analysis because we are definitely not paid enough to do it. They key word being "conservative." I've met engineers that claim collectors don't really exist, and while they are ready to back up their claim I'd rather put in a collector than spend hours proving the need for it.

 

[Jerehmy]

jvvse

I also use woodworks, but just for member design. Wood connections I have a spreadsheet for and diaphragm/shear walls I do by hand. My woodworks package is sizer, shear walls, and connections. I don't like the connection designer as it seems to be wrong in certain instances and I never noticed the shearwall designer til just now lol.

 

[XR250]

+1 on Jvvse's comment