Wood design Software?

[OCI]

I'm curious what others are using for light frame wood structures design. I have software for RC & steel design but am starting to take wood jobs also. I know RISA does wood shearwall design. I have been testing Woodworks. An associate of mine uses elaborate spreadsheets. What are you finding to be the most efficent?

 

[abusementpark]

I use Enercalc a lot. It is very quick and easy to use, but has some limitations. For example, I think for wood beams, you can't define different bracing conditions for the top and bottom of the beam and I think it does some weird things for continuous beams with the "le" factor. I don't think I have had any problems with the column module.

For continuous wood beams, I believe I have gotten the best results from the RAM Continuous Beam Module.

I wish their were a comprehensive software package out there that can handle wood connections.

 

[dik]

I use Woodworks and find it to be excellent.

Dik

 

[frv]

Enercalc is great for simple stuff.. Woodworks is great for more complicated stuff..

 

[OCI]

Thanks for the input. I have used enercalc a little. It seemed like it was mostly for individual components within a structure. The shearwall module in Woodworks looks like a huge time saver. The wind and seismic on a complex custom home looks like it could involve alot of book keeping on a tight budget if you were to do it by hand. Hard to make any money without a good system setup.

 

[abusementpark]

The shearwall module in Woodworks looks like a huge time saver.

How so?

I've always found wood shear wall capacities rather easy to determine from the tables in IBC.