Hi Jordan,

Thank you very much for your input. As I said, I have no reason to doubt what I am seeing is accurate. The sheathing at perimeter walls attached to frame beams will also lend support and reduce loads on these braces, but this is not the case at the interior bent I am concerned about.

My feeling is that the knee braces are being viewed as more architectural than structural. As you know, this is simply not the case. I have increased the size of the beams such that they will not fail even at brace failure as a bit of added insurance.

The chances of failure as you mention are slim at a 2% recurrence interval, however, who wants to gamble on even those odds?

I gather you try to steer framers away from knee braces all together based on results similar to mine? Based on your experience of a trade off between beam and column size, I may experiment with this a bit and see if the reactions on the braces are reduced. I concur with your statement about wreaking havoc on column bending. The deflected shape results foretold the situation.

Thanks again for increasing my awareness.