Although schooled as an engineer, I don't see myself ever producing a detailed frame design along with structural calculations and joinery details. But when planning a timber frame home, some basic frame layout is part of the floor plan process.
I'm planning a small (1,800 sf +/-) timber frame home and the schematic design consists of three ‘boxes;’ a central entry core with a small wing to one side and a larger wing on the opposite side. To make it easier to visualize, just consider a small square with a rectangle on either side.
When laying out a preliminary framing plan (simple grid), I treated the three boxes separately; but moving forward it seems wrong to have columns immediately adjacent to one another. (the corner columns from two of the ‘boxes’)
Question – is there any reason or situation where it would make sense to maintain the three boxes as separate structural systems? (for a novice, it is much easier to consider each box separately) Or would a real frame designer eventually remove the adjacent columns and design the overall framing plan as a single structure, not three separate boxes?
