Author: Debbie Penko

Design Flexibility Made Simple Residential developers increase profitability by offering options—such as a bonus room, an extended kitchen, or an extra bedroom. The Challenge: Structural Changes For structural engineers, these seemingly minor changes can be brutal.  Minor adjustments—like adding a…

Modern apartment buildings and hotels often feature expansive windows and open spaces on exterior walls, leaving little room for traditional shear walls. Cantilevered diaphragms are essential in these designs, efficiently transferring lateral loads to internal supports. With LAVA, designing cantilever…

Simplify Complex Loads: How LAVA Handles Unstacked Lateral Walls In structural design, lateral wall placement and alignment can make or break the building design. When lateral walls aren’t perfectly stacked in a building, the transfer of lateral forces can create…

In LAVA software, shear lines allow you to adjust the method to distribute the lateral force as Stiffness or Capacity based.   SDPWS 4.3.3.4.1 requires ‘Shear distribution to individual shear walls in a shear wall line shall provide the same…

Changes are inevitable in wood design projects, but without an efficient workflow, they can lead to costly delays and missed deadlines. Spreadsheets, though popular, often fall short in handling project changes. Discover how LAVA streamlines your workflow, ensuring accuracy, adaptability, and time savings.