Wood-Frame Shear Wall module

Free Wood Shear Wall Design Calculator — SDPWS 2021 and NDS 2024

Design wood-frame shear walls per SDPWS 2021 and NDS 2024 for wind and seismic. Model the walls on a building plan and distribute the story shear to the wall lines by tributary area and length, unit shear capacity by wood species and sheathing (Table 4.3A), hold-down (tie-down) tension and end-post (compression chord) forces from overturning, Simpson Strong-Tie hold-down and SABR anchor-bolt selection, end-post design per NDS 2024 and collector (drag strut) forces, with ASCE 7-22 load combinations.

Watch how it works · 2 min · narrated with captionsChapters & transcript Also on YouTube ↗

Free to use with no sign-up: the calculator runs in full in the browser with no account, no trial and no feature limits, and the full detailed calculation is shown on screen, step by step, with the code sections and tables it draws on, so it can be checked by hand. A free account keeps one project in the cloud; unlimited cloud projects and printing the report to PDF are Pro features.

Open the free calculator Engineering Guides

What the calculator includes

The building is modeled on a plan, not as a single line: letter and number grids, bays ticked to trace an L-, T- or U-shaped footprint, shear walls picked as grid segments and auto-tagged, several walls per line, the plan and every line's elevation drawn live to scale.
The story force is distributed to the wall lines automatically by the flexible-diaphragm tributary method, seismic by area and wind by length, with a colour overlay of each line's share; an open front transfers its moment to the edge line within the SDPWS §4.2.6.1 limits.
Within a line the shear is shared between walls in proportion to their capacity; the Table 4.3.3 aspect-ratio screen runs live, the §4.3.3.2 and §4.3.5.5.1 factors are applied, and the 2.8 seismic or 2.0 wind ASD factor follows each combination.
SDPWS 2021 Table 4.3A drawn in the book's own layout — Structural I, wood structural panel, plywood siding, particleboard and fiberboard rows, edge nailing at 6, 4, 3 and 2 in — with footnotes 2, 3 (species) and 10 applied, two-sided sheathing per §4.3.5.4.1 and the 3x framing note per §4.3.7.1.
Gravity loads per line (D, L, L_r, S, uniform or concentrated, on all walls or one wall) resist overturning at their combination factor with Ev included; hold-down tension and chord compression are reported for every wall and every combination, both load directions enveloped.
Simpson Strong-Tie hold-downs (DTT and HDUE series) selected from the catalog table, with the hold-down's own C_L dimension setting the overturning moment arm and its minimum post size enforced.
Simpson Strong-Tie SABR anchor bolts from the catalog tables for stem walls, slab edges and garage curbs, the row following the hold-down's rod and the column chosen per combination by wind or by Seismic Design Category.
End posts (compression chords) designed per NDS 2024: compression with C_P, plate bearing and net-section tension at the hold-down bolts, with a design-values table for every post.
Collectors (drag struts): the ASCE 7-22 §12.10.2.1 exception or overstrength with Ω₀, F_px with its 12.10-2 and 12.10-3 bounds, the §12.3.3.5 increase with a re-entrant corner detected from the footprint, and the force F(x) integrated and drawn along the line.
A combination matrix with the line-shear D/C, the collector force and each wall's shear, hold-down and anchor-bolt D/C, every row opening to its substituted checks; a combined free-body and collector diagram per combination with the governing case flagged.

In every StructSuite module

The code clause behind a value is quoted verbatim beside it from a blue book icon — NDS 2024, SDPWS 2021, AISC 360-22, ACI 318-25, ASCE 7-22 and the 2024 IBC, FEMA P-750 and the I-joist manufacturer's technical bulletins — so the standard does not have to be opened to check it.
A missing input stops the calculation rather than being filled in silently, and judgment choices start unselected.
Where a limit applies it is checked as you type: beam R_B and column ℓ_e/d, steel L_c/r, rebar ratios and spacing, f_y and f′_c.
Every module prints into one calculation report (Pro) with a cover sheet, a table of contents with measured page numbers and a verification link a plan checker opens without an account.

StructSuite is an independent product and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Simpson Strong-Tie Company Inc. or any other manufacturer named here. Simpson Strong-Tie®, DTT, HDUE, SABR, Trus Joist®, TJI®, BCI®, LPI, Microllam®, Parallam®, TimberStrand® and Versa-Lam® are trademarks of their respective owners, used only to identify supported products and design-value sources.

Worked examples and guides for this module

How to Design a Wood Shear Wall — A Complete Step-by-Step Guide (SDPWS 2021 & ASCE 7-22)The complete SDPWS 2021 method for designing wood-frame shear walls, worked end to end on a real single-story building: distributing the story force to wall lines (and why wind and seismic split differently), Table 4.3A sheathing capacity with the 2.0/2.8 ASD factors, aspect-ratio penalties, a first trial that FAILS and the three levers that fix it, hold-down and end-post (chord) forces from overturning, anchor bolts and framing clips per NDS Table 12E and SDPWS 4.3.6.4, the collector, and the Eq. 4.3-1 deflection — every formula shown with substituted numbers, every engine value pinned by regression tests, and the few hand-only values marked as such.

Each guide works the method end to end on the numbers the engine produces. The sample calculation report (PDF) is a complete StructSuite report printed from the sample project — open it without an account.

Frequently asked questions

Which shear wall method does it use?

Individual full-height (segmented) shear walls per SDPWS 2021, for wind and seismic, with NDS 2024 for the framing. Story shear is distributed to wall lines from the building plan, unit shear capacity comes from Table 4.3A by sheathing and species, and overturning gives the hold-down tension and end-post (compression chord) forces. Perforated and force-transfer-around-opening walls are not modeled.

Does it cover anchorage and collectors?

Hold-down anchorage, yes: Simpson Strong-Tie DTT and HDUE hold-downs and SABR anchor bolts are selected from their catalog tables and checked for every load combination, and the collector (drag strut) forces are computed with the ASCE 7-22 load combinations. Sill-plate shear transfer (anchor bolts in shear and framing clips) is not part of the released module.

Which checks does it run?

For every lateral ASD combination of ASCE 7-22 §2.4.1 and §2.4.5: line shear against the Table 4.3A capacity with the 2.8 seismic or 2.0 wind factor and the aspect-ratio factors, shear shared between the walls on a line by capacity, overturning per wall with the dead load resisting at its combination factor, hold-down tension and compression-chord forces, the selected hold-down and SABR anchor bolt D/C, the end post per NDS 2024 (compression with C_P, plate bearing, net-section tension) and the collector force along the line. Each row of the combination matrix opens to its substituted checks.

Is the wood-frame shear wall calculator free?

Yes. Free to use with no sign-up: the calculator runs in full in the browser with no account, no trial and no feature limits, and the full detailed calculation is shown on screen, step by step, with the code sections and tables it draws on, so it can be checked by hand. A free account keeps one project in the cloud; unlimited cloud projects and printing the report to PDF are Pro features.