Structural Calculation Package Step by Step — Full Worked Example (ASCE 7-22, NDS 2024, ACI 318-25)

What a complete calculation package contains

0:02This is StructSuite. In this video we build one complete structural calculation package from an empty page — ten design modules, every step, every input — then print it for submittal and hand a plan checker a live link to it. And it is not a made-up example. This is the sample project on the home page. Everything you are about to watch us build is the same package behind Try a sample project and behind the sample report PDF — same modules, same numbers, same results. So you can follow along in the app, or open the finished PDF and read ahead.

0:34The building is a two-story residential addition in seismic design category D. We will design a floor beam, floor joists, a post, a shear wall, a spread footing, and a cantilever retaining wall — and before any of them, the loads they all share.

Setting up — free vs paid

0:48Start at the sign-up page. Enter an email address and a password and choose Create account, or use Continue with Google if you would rather not manage another password.

1:01If you sign up with an email address, StructSuite sends a verification link to that address. Open it, then sign in. That is the whole of it — there is nothing to install and nothing to license on a particular machine. Be clear about what an account gets you. On the free plan you can add every module and see every calculation on screen, exactly as we are about to. Saving a project to the cloud, printing the package for submittal, and sharing the live link a plan checker opens — those are Pro. There is a monthly subscription, and there is a one-time week pass if you have a single project to get out.

How the report is assembled from modules

1:36This is your report. Down the left is the module list — loads, seismic, wind, beams, joists, columns, shear walls, footings, retaining walls. You add the ones your building needs and each becomes a section of one document.

1:50One convention runs through the whole app, so learn it once. A step opens red, because nothing in it is defined yet, and the red line tells you which code section or table the value comes from. The moment you define it, that line turns blue. When a module is all blue, you have made every decision it needs. One more habit worth copying. Rename every module to the mark it carries on the drawings — beam B-1, post P-2, shear wall SW-1. A plan checker reads your calculation next to your plans, and the mark is how they find their way between the two. The pencil beside the title does it.

Cover Sheet

2:24First module, the cover sheet. It is the front page of the submittal, and it is the one module that is not a calculation. Choose a layout. There is a plain standard sheet, a showcase sheet with a photograph behind the title, and a blank one you lay out yourself. The sample uses the showcase sheet. Then the identity of the submittal: the project title — structural calculations for a two-story residential addition — the address, the client, the project number, the general notes, the engineer of record, and who checked it. Everything on this sample sheet is fictional. Your own firm and license go here in your own report.

3:14Your firm logo and your professional engineer's stamp upload straight onto the sheet, so the cover comes out of the same print as the calculations instead of being a separate PDF you staple on the front.

Dead & Live Loads

3:25Now the loads every gravity member in the building will share. This module builds dead loads from material weights and assigns live loads by occupancy, both per ASCE 7-22. Add the assemblies the building actually has — a roof, a ceiling, and a second floor. Each one is built from the material weights in Table C3.1-1a rather than from a single number you had to justify later. The roof assembly here comes to 10.35 pounds per square foot, and the ceiling to 13.20.

3:56Wall assemblies are on the same list, and the sample turns both of them on — an interior partition and an exterior wall — because a real package needs them and because they are easy to leave out. Live loads come off Table 4.3-1 by occupancy: forty pounds per square foot for living areas, thirty for sleeping rooms, twenty for an ordinary roof, and ten for an uninhabitable attic without storage. The table also carries whether live-load reduction is permitted and under which section, so that decision is in front of you rather than in your head.

Seismic Loads

4:29Seismic loads next. This module runs the equivalent lateral force procedure of ASCE 7-22 Chapter 12, from the site parameters to the story forces and the diaphragm forces. Step one is the building itself: the effective seismic weight and the story height at each level. Two levels, forty thousand pounds each, ten feet each, so the total effective seismic weight is eighty thousand pounds and the roof is twenty feet above the base.

4:57Step two is the site. Pick the site class from Table 20.2-1 — D, medium dense sand or stiff clay — and enter the mapped and design spectral accelerations from the hazard tool: Ss one point zero, S1 zero point six, SDS zero point six six seven, SD1 zero point four, and a long-period transition of eight seconds. Step three sets the risk category from Table 1.5-1. A residence is category two, so the importance factor is one point zero, and from Tables 11.6-1 and 11.6-2 this site falls in seismic design category D. Note that, because every other module in this package has to agree with it.

5:38Step four is the force-resisting system, chosen from Table 12.2-1 itself rather than from a dropdown of letters. Bearing wall systems, row sixteen: light-frame wood walls sheathed with wood structural panels rated for shear resistance. That row carries the response modification coefficient R of six and a half, the overstrength factor of three, and a deflection amplification factor of four. Step five takes the approximate fundamental period from Equation 12.8-8 — zero point one eight nine seconds. Step six gives the seismic response coefficient Cs of zero point one zero two six, and a base shear of eight thousand two hundred and nine pounds at strength design, or five thousand seven hundred and forty-six pounds at allowable stress.

6:21Steps seven and eight push that base shear back up the building — the story force, story shear and overturning moment at each level, then the diaphragm design forces Fpx, which is what the shear wall module will need.

6:39And step nine draws it: story forces, story shears, overturning moment and diaphragm forces up the height of the building. A plan checker can see the distribution without re-adding your table.

Wind Loads

6:50Wind loads. This module offers both main wind force resisting system procedures — the directional procedure of Chapter 27 and the envelope procedure of Chapter 28. The sample uses Chapter 27.

7:08Step two is the building envelope: two hundred and fifty feet parallel to the ridge, two hundred normal to it, and a gable roof at eighteen point four three degrees — which the app immediately labels as a four in twelve, because that is how the roof is drawn. Then the height. You can define it by the ridge, by the eave, or by the mean roof height; give it the mean roof height of thirty-six point six seven feet and it reports the other two back — a twenty foot eave and a ridge at fifty-three point three three.

7:36Steps three and four are the risk category again — two — and the basic wind speed for that category at this site, one hundred and fifteen miles per hour.

7:49Step five is where the parameters are chosen, and the sample deliberately takes the long road on every one of them. Directionality Kd is zero point eight five for a main wind force resisting system. Exposure C, open terrain. Then the topographic factor: rather than taking the Kzt equals one shortcut, this site sits one hundred feet downwind of the crest of a sixty foot two-dimensional ridge, and Figure 26.8-1 gives Kzt of one point three six.

8:38The ground elevation factor Ke is read off Table 26.9-1 for a site a thousand feet above sea level instead of taken as one. And the enclosure classification is derived from the actual opening areas under Section 26.12 rather than asserted — which is how you show a reviewer that enclosed was a finding, not an assumption.

9:12Steps six and seven are computed. The velocity pressure exposure coefficient Kz is tabulated at every height that matters — one point zero two at the mean roof height — and the velocity pressure follows: forty-five point one nine pounds per square foot at the mean roof height, rising to forty-eight point eight nine at the ridge. Step eight reads the external pressure coefficients for both wind directions, and step nine turns them into design pressures on every surface, for positive and negative internal pressure, at every height up the windward wall. Windward wall pressures run from about fourteen point eight five to thirty-five point one seven pounds per square foot depending on height and internal pressure sign.

9:52Step ten evaluates the four design wind load cases of Figure 27.3-8, including the torsional ones, and the Section 27.1.5 minimum. Step eleven draws the pressures on both elevations and the load cases in plan — pick a case in the sidebar and the drawing follows it.

Beam B-1

10:27Now a member. This is StructSuite's most complete designer: sawn lumber, glulam, LVL, LSL, PSL and I-joists per NDS 2024, or steel W-shapes, HSS and pipe per AISC 360-22. We rename it to its mark — beam B-1 at the second floor, grid B two to B three. Step one, geometry. Wood is the design material, and this is a single fourteen foot span, pinned at both ends. You can add spans here for a continuous beam, and you can set each support independently.

11:01Step two, loads, built from ASCE 7-22 load types rather than one lumped number: twenty-five pounds per linear foot dead, one hundred live, fifty snow, each uniform over the full span. Notice the self-weight row at the top is waiting on Step three — the app adds it for you once it knows the section. You can also enter a load as pounds per square foot over a tributary width, and there are point and trapezoidal loads if you need them.

11:32Step three is the NDS Supplement, on screen. Table 4A for visually graded dimension lumber gives Douglas Fir-Larch Number 2, two inch and wider: bending nine hundred, shear one eighty, compression perpendicular six twenty-five, modulus of elasticity one point six million. Then the section from Table 1B — a 4x10. And now go back and look at Step two: the self-weight has filled itself in at seven point nine pounds per linear foot.

11:58Step four is the adjustment factors, and this is the step engineers usually have to defend. Every one is shown with the condition that produced it: dry service so CM is one, temperature under a hundred degrees so Ct is one, not incised, repetitive member so Cr is one point one five, size factor CF of one point two for a 4x10, edgewise use, compression edge braced so the beam stability factor is one. Load duration is combination-specific and expands to show all of them. Bearing length is opt-in — enter three and a half inches and the compression perpendicular check per NDS 3.10.2 actually runs.

12:36Step five is optional, and the sample turns it on, because an optional step you never open is a capability you never learn. Tick it, describe the connection — a flush top, face-mount hanger onto a 4x12 Douglas Fir-Larch girder — and it sizes the hanger against the real end reaction. It returns an HGUS410, and it passes.

13:07Step six checks the beam against every load combination and shows the governing one. Dead plus live governs: moment demand-capacity zero point six three zero, shear zero point two three nine, deflection zero point five zero two, bearing zero point one two one, and the connection zero point one two zero. Open a row and the whole derivation is there, line by line, with the code reference beside each step.

13:31Step seven draws it — the beam model, then shear, moment and deflection. Maximum moment three thousand two hundred and fifty-six pound-feet, maximum shear nine hundred and thirty pounds, maximum deflection zero point two three four inches under live load against a span over three sixty limit.

Floor Joists FJ-1

13:51Not every member needs an engineered design. Repetitive framing is usually a prescriptive span-table lookup, and this module is that — the 2024 IBC span tables of Chapter 23, plus the Trus Joist TJI engineered I-joist spans. Step one: a floor joist, designed on common lumber species, spanning fourteen feet zero inches.

14:22Step two is every remaining choice as a table selection, not free typing: thirty pounds per square foot live at a deflection limit of span over three sixty, ten pounds per square foot dead, sixteen inches on center, a 2x8, Douglas Fir-Larch number 2.

14:46The hanger step is optional here too, and again the sample opens it. It queries Simpson Strong-Tie's catalogue live and lists every model that fits, with its allowable download and uplift beside it. Pick the APLH26 — a thousand and forty pounds down, six hundred and ninety up — and it passes.

15:21Step four gives the verdict against the table it came from. Passes per Table 2308.8.2.1(1): the tabulated maximum span is fourteen feet one inch, and we are spanning fourteen feet zero. That is a one inch margin, and the app tells you so rather than just saying pass.

Post P-2

15:40The post under that beam. Same idea as the beam module — wood per NDS 2024 or steel per AISC 360-22 — with the column stability factor and effective length as the extra work. Step one. Ten feet tall, effective length factor one point zero, pinned top and bottom with no sway. And the part worth pausing on: bracing is entered per axis. Ten feet unbraced about the strong axis, but blocked at mid-height about the weak axis, so five feet there.

16:07That distinction is what decides the column stability factor. Step two, loads: six thousand pounds dead, three thousand five hundred live, self-weight included, and one hundred and fifty pounds per linear foot of wind across the face — so this post is not a pure column and the combined bending and axial checks will actually run.

16:31Steps three and four are the same NDS tables and the same adjustment factor matrix as the beam — Douglas Fir-Larch number 2, a 4x6 — with the size factors that apply to a column, including the separate one for the combined bending and axial case.

17:03Step five. The governing combination is dead plus three-quarters live plus three-quarters of point-six wind, at eight thousand six hundred and seventy-two pounds. Axial demand-capacity is zero point five zero four, the combined bending and axial check per NDS 3.9.2 is zero point eight one one, and bearing on the plate below is zero point seven one seven. It passes, and the combined check is what governs — which is exactly why the wind was entered.

17:29Step six draws the post under that governing case, with the lateral load reduced by the combination factor and a maximum moment of eight hundred and forty-four pound-feet.

Shear Wall SW-1

17:44The lateral system. This module designs wood-frame shear walls per SDPWS 2021 and NDS 2024, for wind and for seismic, with ASCE 7-22 combinations. Step one is the wall line: two segments, both nine feet tall, one eight feet long and one six, four feet apart, with a six foot diaphragm offset at the left end and two feet at the right. The height to length ratios are shown as you type, because SDPWS limits them.

18:23Step two, the forces at the top of the wall line: four thousand five hundred pounds of wind, three thousand eight hundred pounds of earthquake before the redundancy factor, with rho of one and the SDS of zero point six six seven we established in the seismic module — one building, one site, one number. Gravity on the walls is eight hundred pounds per linear foot dead and four hundred live, and the vertical seismic term follows from SDS automatically.

19:00Step three is Table 4.3A itself. Structural I wood structural panels, seven-sixteenths nominal, eight-penny common nails, six inches at the panel edges — which gives a nominal unit shear capacity of seven hundred and fifteen pounds per linear foot. Step four is everything that holds the wall down. Substep A is the hold-down, picked from the Simpson table — a DTT2Z at one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds in Douglas Fir or Southern Pine. Substep B is optional and the sample turns it on: the anchor bolt at the stem wall, checked against the SABR table. Substep C is optional too, and designs the end post — a 6x6 Douglas Fir-Larch number 2 chord.

19:56Step five lays every check out per wall with its governing combination. Both segments are governed by point-six dead minus point-seven vertical seismic plus point-seven horizontal seismic. Sheathing line shear runs at seventy-four percent on both. Hold-down tension is five percent on the eight foot segment and twenty-seven percent on the six foot one — the shorter wall works harder, which is the whole reason the table is per wall.

20:19Underneath, the collector — the drag strut — is carrying a maximum of six hundred and twenty-three pounds at the left end of the first segment. Step six summarises it and draws it: two thousand six hundred and sixty pounds of demand against three thousand five hundred and seventy-five of capacity, and end post compression of five thousand nine hundred and seven pounds, thirty-one percent of what the post can take. Open it and you get the wall-line elevation and the unit shear diagram.

Footing F-1

20:47Down to the foundation. Isolated and strip footings per ACI 318-25, with ASCE 7-22 combinations. Step one, and the sample turns on every optional part of it. A twelve by twelve foot isolated footing, thirty-six inches thick, with two feet of fill and a six inch slab over it. The support is a steel column, entered by its flange and its base plate. Then add a two by two by two foot pedestal under it, and watch what the app tells you:

21:17with a pedestal in place the loaded area for design becomes the pedestal plan, so shear, bearing and flexure all use those dimensions instead of the column's. Finally, a three inch eccentricity in each direction.

21:54Step two: four thousand PSI concrete, sixty KSI steel, six thousand pounds per square foot allowable bearing, normal weight. A friction coefficient of zero point three five and eight kips of passive resistance, which is what lets the sliding check run in full. Twelve number 9 bars each way at three inch cover.

22:36Step three, the loads: three hundred and forty kips dead, two hundred live, and a wind case carrying twenty kips of shear and sixty kip-feet of moment in each plane — which turns on the overturning and sliding checks and the biaxial pressure path. Seismic design category D, the same D the seismic module derived.

23:12Step four runs the checks. Bearing for sizing at zero point eight five, one-way shear zero point three eight, two-way punching shear zero point four nine, flexure zero point five two, bearing on the loaded area zero point two nine, and development at zero point nine four — the tightest one, and worth seeing before a reviewer finds it. Stability comes out well clear: an overturning stability ratio of twelve point nine seven against one point five required, and sliding at eight point five seven against one point zero.

23:41Step five gives you the plan, the sections, the soil pressure distribution under the biaxial case, and the demand-capacity ratios on the drawing.

Retaining Wall RW-1

24:05The last module, and the hardest one in the package: a cantilever retaining wall per ACI 318-25, IBC 2024 and ASCE 7-22. Step one, the wall section. A ten foot stem twelve inches thick, on an eighteen inch footing ten feet wide — three feet of toe, six feet of heel — with a foot of soil cover over the toe and a twelve by forty-two inch shear key. And then the choice that drives everything after it: the backfill is sloped, three horizontal to one vertical, eighteen point four three degrees, so the ground keeps rising past the heel.

24:52Step two is the soil, and the slope forces two decisions. The lateral pressure has to come from the geotechnical report — thirty pounds per square foot per foot of depth — because the table values in IBC Table 1610.1 and ASCE 7-22 Table 3.2-1 are level-backfill states. And a hundred pounds per square foot of surcharge, treated as variable so its weight is excluded from the resisting side but its pressure is not. Sliding uses friction at zero point three five plus passive resistance, with a three thousand pound per square foot allowable bearing.

25:26The same slope forces the seismic method. Seed-Whitman is a level-ground formulation, so this wall uses Mononobe-Okabe — at the same SDS the seismic module derived for this site, on a yielding wall, with the wall's own inertia included and a friction angle of forty degrees. This is the kind of coupling that gets missed when each check lives in its own spreadsheet.

25:54Step three: three thousand PSI concrete, sixty thousand PSI steel, covers of two inches on the stem's earth face and three at the footing bottom. Number 6 bars at eight inches vertically in the stem, number 4 at nine horizontally, number 6 at eight in the heel top, number 6 at twelve in the toe, and number 5 longitudinal bars at nine.

26:42Step four, and the point the sample is making. Statically the wall is comfortable — overturning factor of safety five point one five against one point five required, sliding two point six zero against one point five, maximum bearing one thousand three hundred and eighty-two pounds per square foot against three thousand allowable. Under the earthquake case it tightens right up: seismic overturning two point zero eight against one point one, seismic sliding one point two eight against one point one, and seismic bearing two thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine against three thousand. On a sloped wall in seismic design category D it is the earthquake, not gravity, that sizes the key and the reinforcement.

27:20Step five draws the section with the earth pressure diagram, the passive resistance on the toe, and the bearing distribution under the footing.

Table of contents, page numbers, ordering

27:56Ten modules in, look at the top of the page. There is a table of contents. It lists every design module by the mark you gave it, with the page that section starts on — the cover sheet sits above the list, because it is page one. You never built this and you never have to renumber it. The order is yours — move a module up or down and the contents follow. Duplicate one to design a second beam from the first, and only change what differs.

Printing the package — US Letter, permit-ready

28:28Now print it. On Pro, Print Report lays the whole package out for US Letter, portrait — starting with the cover sheet you built first. Behind the cover comes every module in order — the loads, the seismic and wind analyses with their diagrams, then each member with its full derivation, code reference by code reference. This sample package prints to thirty-six pages, and it is the same thirty-six pages you can download from the home page right now as the sample report.

29:07Every page carries the project name, the date and its own number, and those numbers are the ones printed in the table of contents — measured against the real paginated output, not estimated.

The verification link printed on the report

29:22There is a second way to hand this over, and it is the one plan checkers keep asking for. Every saved package gets a verification link, and it is printed onto the report itself — right here — so a reviewer holding the paper can reach the live calculation behind it. On Pro, that same link sits above your open project with a button that copies it to the clipboard.

29:44The person you send it to needs no account and downloads nothing. They get a read-only copy of the package as it stands, with a content fingerprint printed beside the link — so they can tell whether what they are reading is still what you submitted.

What the plan checker sees — read-only, live

29:57This is that link opened as a reviewer. Same package, same modules, same marks — beam B-1, post P-2, shear wall SW-1 — but nothing can be edited and the editing controls are gone.

30:24And it is live, not a picture of a report. They open any module and expand any step, and read it as it stands — every input, the governing load combination, the demand against the capacity, and the code section each value came from. Nothing is an image: it is your calculation, rendered for them.

31:00You can try this yourself before you sign up for anything. The sample report's verification link is public, it points at this same sample package, and it is the same reviewer view — no account, nothing to install.

Where to start

31:13That is the whole loop. An empty page, ten modules, every step defined and every value traceable to the code it came from, printed as a submittal and shared as a live link a reviewer can actually explore. The fastest way in is the package you just watched us build. Open Try a sample project and every module is there, filled in and editable — change a number and watch the checks move. Or read the sample report PDF first. Then add your first module, and build your own.