Residential Home Design to Australian Standards

How to design a residential home to meet the Australian National Construction Code (NCC) and the relevant Australian Standards.

About this event

Structural design and analysis are crucial parts of residential building design and construction. The primary objective of structural design and analysis is to ensure the house structures can resist all applied loads without failure during their intended life. In Australia, the construction of a residential building is governed by the National Construction Code (NCC).

Join our Head of Engineering, R&D, Brooks Smith, on Wednesday, August 24th, from 12 pm to 1 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) to learn how you can translate the architectural drawing of a residential home onto ClearCalcs to design and analyse your house structures to meet the relevant Australian Standards as prescribed by the National Construction Code.

We will show how:

• To set up your project defaults to save time when designing contiguous buildings
• Use presets so you can choose the optimal member with pre-loaded data for your design
• Load linking will dynamically add reactions between your loads from roof to foundation

All registered attendees will receive a recording of the webinar after the event.

In this webinar, we will cover:

• How to read your architectural plan
• Finding your wind loads to AS/NZS 1170.2
• Setting up your workflow in ClearCalcs

Webinar Summary

The webinar on designing a house to Australian standards using ClearCalcs was presented by Brooks Smith. ClearCalcs is a cloud-based structural design platform that simplifies engineering work with design tools for concrete, steel, cold form steel, and timber. The agenda covered setting up a project, inputting loads and geometry, identifying members, sizing them efficiently, following the load path structure, and submitting the work. A lighthouse keeper's dwelling plan was used as an example.

The project details screen in ClearCalcs allows for optional fields, except for the building standard which defaults to the organization's default. Project defaults can be used to save time by entering data once and having it propagate throughout the entire project, including default loads and geometry. Advanced functionality includes using any field in project defaults anywhere in ClearCalcs.

The current segment explains how ClearCalcs simplifies the process of identifying individual members for design by providing presets that open up with the most common inputs already applied, saving time for the user. If a preset is not available, users can request it from the engineering team.

ClearCalcs offers two options for sizing members: the member selector and auto size feature. The member selector allows users to filter sections by stress grade, manufacturer, and size, while the auto size feature automatically selects the most structurally efficient section from preferred sections set by the user. ClearCalcs also simplifies following the load path structure through load linking, which automatically updates any relevant changes made in upstream sheets. Finally, ClearCalcs offers options for reviewing, organizing, exporting, and printing the completed project.

ClearCalcs also offers the ability to organize calculations into groups and view quantity views, which allows for quick changes to be made to member selections. The platform also provides three different print modes for exporting calculations and an archive function for finalizing projects and keeping track of versioning.

ClearCalcs allows users to easily modify loads and geometry in a project, and offers presets for identifying individual members for design. The member selector and auto size feature simplify the process of sizing members efficiently, while load linking updates any relevant changes made to the load path structure. ClearCalcs also provides a member schedule for easy organization and exporting options for PDFs.

ClearCalcs allows users to easily change materials for members if the initial selection does not satisfy design requirements, and this can be done through the member selector or the "change material" button. ClearCalcs also offers a student plan for academic use and users can send feature requests through the help button. Additionally, the default paper size for exports is based on the user's web browser settings.

ClearCalcs allows users to disable bearing checks by setting the bearing lengths to zero, and project defaults are specific to individual projects and do not affect previous or future projects. However, ClearCalcs may consider adding organization-level defaults in the future. There is currently no way to add individual deflection limit absolute criteria to different load cases, but ClearCalcs welcomes feature requests. The platform also plans to update its masonry support calculators and potentially add a wall bracing design calculator. ClearCalcs already offers connection calculators for timber bolts, nails, screws, steel bolts, and welds, but plans to make connection design easier for users.

ClearCalcs plans to expand their connection calculators to include options for elbow connector and moment bolt connection, as well as allowing users to enter specific locations for individual discrete braces in their steel calculator. They also independently take into account uplift and downward loads in their cold form steel calculator, which considers the restraints on the top and bottom flanges separately.