What's new at ClearCalcs? (January 2024)

This month, we're expanding the Wood Shear Wall Calculator's capabilities to include the ability to design perforated shear walls and specify holdown designs based on the Simpson Strong-Tie catalog. Plus, the Steel Joist Calculator is fully launched and out of the Beta version.

Table of Contents:

• Specify holdown connectors for shear wall design
• Perforated multi-story shear wall with openings now available for the Wood Shear Wall Calculator
• Steel Joist Calculator to SJI 100-2020 out of the Beta version

Let's get right into it.

Wood Shear Wall

Easily specify holdown connectors for shear wall design

We have now integrated the Simpson Strong-Tie catalog into the Wood Shear Wall Calculator to AWC SDPWS 2021 and AWC NDS 2018 so you can easily specify your holdown connectors in one place.

Holdowns are generally required when overturning conditions cause uplift at the chords. Based on the maximum chord tension load, the calculator automatically determines whether holdowns are necessary for your shear wall design.

Using the integrated member selector, you can easily choose the appropriate holdowns for your shear wall based on the complete Simpson Strong-Tie catalog, removing the need to refer to or browse the catalog and manually calculate the holdown capacity.

See it in action.

Perforated multi-story shear wall with openings now available for the Wood Shear Wall Calculator

You now have the option to choose between perforated or segmented shear wall types when designing shear walls with the Wood Shear Wall Calculator.

Plus, when creating perforated multi-story shear walls, you have the ability to include openings at any location of any story in your design. This added flexibility saves you time by eliminating the need for manual load calculations from one story to another.

The key difference in these wall types is in how openings are considered in the shear wall capacity calculation.

Perforated shear walls offer greater architectural flexibility because of continuous openings within the walls. Additionally, perforated shear walls typically only need holdowns at the very ends of the shear walls compared to every opening in segmented shear walls, making it more cost-efficient and less labor-intensive to construct.

The calculator will also automatically determine the holdowns required for your shear wall design based on whether the shear wall is segmented and perforated, and you can also now easily determine your holdown specifications with the latest integration of Simpson Strong-Tie connectors database in the calculator.

See a worked example of the Wood Shear Wall Calculator with perforated shear wall.

Steel Joist

Steel Joist Calculator to SJI 100-2020 out of the Beta version

The Steel Joist Calculator to SJI 100-2020 has been extensively and independently reviewed by an external reviewer and is now out of its Beta version.

In summary, the Steel Joist Calculator allows you to:

• Design open web steel joists based on the Steel Joist Institute's SJI Load Tables.
• Quickly size K-series and LH-series steel joists and check for the moment and shear utilization from a database of thousands of sections from SJI 100-2020.
• Dynamically link load reactions between steel joists as point loads or line loads to save time and avoid copy-pasting load reactions over and over again.

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That's all for this month. If you have any feature requests, you can send them to help@clearcalcs.com or submit them in our subscribers-only community forum, the Blueprint.