Residential Home Design to American Standards

How to design a residential home to meet the International Building Code (IBC), International Residential Code (IRC), and the relevant American 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 being built can resist all applied loads without failure during their intended life. In the United States, the construction of a residential building is governed by the International Residential Code (IRC).

Join our Structural Lead North America, Laurent Gérin, on Wednesday, August 24th, from 1 pm to 2 pm Eastern Time (EST) to learn how you can translate the architectural drawing of a residential home into ClearCalcs to design and analyze your house structures to meet the relevant American Standards as prescribed by the International Residential Code (IRC).

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 ASCE 7 wind maps
• Setting up your workflow in ClearCalcs

Webinar Summary

The ClearCalcs webinar begins with introductions and a brief overview of the platform. The focus of the webinar is on building a house in ClearCalcs, with Laurent leading the presentation. The first topic discussed is projects in ClearCalcs and how to collaborate with coworkers.

Users can create template projects in ClearCalcs for frequently designed buildings or retrofits, which can be copied and used for real projects. The project details page allows for optional information, including preferred sections that can be copied from other projects to save time in finding different sections during design. The location information and building standard can also be set on this page.

Laurent moves on to discuss project defaults in ClearCalcs, which can be used to set up the geometry and load of a project. These defaults can be overridden as needed, but they are useful for saving time when designing frequently used structures such as stud walls. The platform also offers a convenient window calculator and ANCE hazards tool for determining wind pressure and other factors.

Laurent continues to discuss the project defaults in ClearCalcs, including options for absolute deflection limits and building geometry such as number of stories and roof slope. The platform also offers default spacing for rafters, joists, and studs, which can be easily updated for convenience. Additionally, Laurent explains the input options for floor dimensions, headroom, and window height, as well as wind loads and effective wind areas.

Laurent explains how to determine wind pressure based on the enclosure type of a building, with enclosed buildings having fewer windows and partially enclosed buildings having more. He also emphasizes that project defaults are just defaults and may not apply to every design, but they can save time when designing an entire home from top to bottom.

Laurent discusses the member presets in ClearCalcs, which can be used to quickly design frequently used structures such as floor joists and rafters. The platform also offers a feature called auto styles, which allows users to filter by different sizes and see their preferred sections at the top of the list for easy visualization. Laurent then demonstrates how to design a rafter and adjust the beam plan link to fit the project's needs.

Laurent discusses load linking in ClearCalcs, which allows users to carry loads from the top of the roof all the way down to the foundation. This feature is useful for avoiding mistakes when copy-pasting numbers and for tracking the load path throughout the structure. Laurent demonstrates load linking by designing a ridge beam, first floor stud wall, floor joists, second floor stud wall, and wall footing.

Laurent discusses the design of a stud wall to support multiple loads, including wind loads and gravity loads from joists and walls above. He demonstrates how to link these loads in ClearCalcs and shows that the two-by-six Douglas fir is sufficient for this application. The next step is to design the floor joists, which he quickly completes using auto-sizing.

Laurent links the roof rafters to the stud wall above it, automatically carrying the loads to the first floor. He adds floor joists and designs a wall footing, which takes all the loads from the stud wall, rafters, and floor joists. The platform's useful feature guarantees that changes made to the design will be recalculated based on the new load.

After discussing the different modes of printing and exporting in ClearCalcs, Laurent demonstrates how to export a project and archive it for future reference. The platform also offers a duplicate feature for making changes to previous projects without altering the original.