A Comprehensive Approach to Wood Building Design Education

Have you ever tried to put a jig saw puzzle together without knowing
what the final picture looks like? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the picture to guide you, or better yet, have all the pieces identified so you could put the puzzle together in the minimum amount of time? Some will argue that the
challenge is part of the enjoyment. Perhaps – but maybe not
if the puzzle is a building and a client is paying you to design
it quickly at a reasonable cost. Design tools and knowing
how to use them effectively are very important to a design
professional at any level and scale. AF&PA’s American Wood
Council (AWC) has been providing tools for wood structures
to the design professional community since 1944- the
National Design Specification? for Wood Construction
(NDS?) (with printed instructions regarding how to use it)
(Fig. 1), and has since expanded its offerings considerably.
This paper will help orient the design professional to the
most current tools available from AWC and take a brie look
at the planned future of educating wood design practitioners
on how to use them.

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