Create & Manage Wood Beam Calcs
Create, edit, and run wood beam (flexural member) calculations and read their results.
A wood beam calc is an NDS flexural-member check: you describe a simple-span beam — its span, member section, species, grade, and service conditions — apply load cases, and ClearSpan solves bending, shear, and deflection demand-to-capacity ratios (DCRs) for every case.
What a wood beam calc holds#
Each wood beam calc carries a member definition plus a set of load cases. The solver runs against the member you select and reports per-case demands and DCRs.
| Group | What you set |
|---|---|
| Member | Span (ft), section, material (sawn lumber or SCL — LVL / PSL / LSL), species, grade, number of plies |
| Bracing | Brace spacing (ft); 0 means continuously braced |
| Service & adjustments | Wet service (Cm), repetitive member (Cr), incised (Ci) toggles |
| Loads | Load patterns, factored combinations, and named load cases — usually imported from a beam analysis |
| Deflection | Per-case deflection limit (e.g. L/360, L/240) |
Demands (M, V, deflection) and DCRs always come from the solver. There is no manual moment/shear entry on a wood beam capacity check — you bring loads in from an analysis and pick a member.
Create and edit a beam#
- Open a project and start a new wood beam calc (or open an existing one from the project's calc list).
- Set the member: span, section, species, grade, plies, brace spacing, and any service condition toggles.
- Add load cases. The capacity check pulls its demands from a beam analysis — use Import from calc… to copy the load patterns, combinations, and cases from an existing beam analysis in the same project. See Link Loads to a Calc.
- The page re-solves automatically a moment after you change the member, showing a live envelope of the controlling DCRs.
Loads themselves are built from area or point loads over tributary widths/areas — see Area & Point Loads and Load Criteria.
Run and read results#
Solving produces, for each load case:
- M (kip-ft) and V (kips) demand
- Bending DCR, Shear DCR, and Deflection DCR
- A pass/fail status chip per case (any DCR over 1.0 fails)
- An envelope across all cases, with the controlling case highlighted
Expand the candidate-section sweep to compare other sections at the same loads and pick a lighter or heavier member; selecting a row updates the member. For the underlying analysis (shear/moment/deflection diagrams and reactions), see Beam Design: Run Analysis & View Diagrams.
Save, revise, and report#
A new wood beam calc starts as a draft. Use Save changes to persist the current design and re-solve on the server so cached results stick. Create revision snapshots the current edits as a new latest revision; older revisions become read-only. See Revisions.
When the design is ready, generate the calc report PDF from the page, and move the calc through the workflow described in Calculation Lifecycle.