That's standard fare in square rule. The braces are not reduced to a uniform dimension like everything else, so if your 3x5 brace was 3x5.125 you'd be in big trouble on raising day (with square rule usually no pre-fitting). Unless you planed or resawed all the braces perfectly, and had perfect 7.071" mortises. Not necessarily pretty but can always get around it with mapping or scribing.

Hi,
All of the aforementioned practical reasons given are quite correct but there is also the requirement to prevent the brace to beam or brace to post from becoming a moment connection. The brace should be acting in simple compression or tension. A combination of tension plus moment will break out the tenon relish more easily.

Ken Hume

Ken..

So if I over build the frame....then wrap it with SIPS panels and screw the living day lights out of it with panel screws and anchor those to a sill plate...How much movement will I get????

Just curious

Hi Pegs,

That's a good question and one to which The Guild has addressed itself over the years as part of its sponsored research programmes. If you go to the "members only" area you can download various reports that give some idea of how joints, frames and sheathed structures perform but even this will not completely answer your question satisfactorily.

It is quite possible today if one is equipped with a good 3D structural modelling programme to approximate the behavior of a composite structure and obtain an indication of how it might behave under certain loading conditions. These programmes do not tend to be as easy to use as Sketchup and come with quite a high price tag and it really it is a pre requisite to have had some education in structural mechanics.

It would be important to try at least to understand the implications of your actions since buildings will hopefully stand for a long while and structural outcomes calculated today might no longer hold true in several hundred years time when a building has yielded, pieces have been removed, load path distribution changed, etc., so there is really no absolute answer to your question.

Regards

Ken Hume M.Sc.

Here is another brace, still with room at the back, but now hidden.
I generally use this brace for residential interior posts, if the brace is more than 1" smaller than the post, the housing would be closed, or 'blind'. I would like to hear more about the practice of leaving room at the back of angled connections. I take from the above discussion that there is less damage done to the brace when the frame bends...

here is a model and a question, can you colour edges in SU?
this is another class project, I want the snaplines to be red. I have the snaplines made into a group and put onto thier own layer....


http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=f58f4f06072ef8365a9cb838851981cc

Mark,,

Here is where you go....there are several clicks... I'll list each one so you won't get lost...

first ..Top of the page...click on "WINDOW" option

second...on the "window dropdown" menu...motor down to "STYLES" and click that one.

Third ....you should be at the "STYLES" menu...there should be 3 TABS on the upper part of the menu...they are "SELECT" "EDIT" and "MIX"...you want to click on EDIT

Fourth...now you should be on the EDIT menu....Right under the word EDIT there are 5 box types.....you want the one that is way on the left...IT LOOKS LIKE A WIRE DIAGRAM BOX...NO TEXTURES OR FACES..
Click on that one...

Fifth..now you should be on the Edit edge menu...you can screw around with the settings there if you want...might want to write down what they were before you started though....I don't think theres a default setting to get them back...ANYWAY..the box you want is half way down....It should say...COLOR...then in a window..."all the same" followed by a black box....you want to click on the black box....that will let you change the color of your lines.

But it will change the color of "all your lines".....


I don't use layers much.....but there is something in there you might be interested in as well...When you are on step 3... Look for the "COLOR BY LAYER" box...it is unchecked by default....but you can use this to change the colors schemes of your layers...I would think that would help keep them straight...after you are done you can go back and uncheck the box and they will all be the same again...

On that same page there is a box for "GUIDES"...which are your construction lines.....you can change the color of them too.

I don't think there is a way to individually change the colors of lines as you go through a drawing....would be nice though...


one way you can make the contrast more apparent would be to soften your corners....then the edge lines won't show up but any lines drawn on the face will be well defined.

thanks pegs... yes it would be individual edges(lines) I need to colour.
Doesn't look possible, YET.
Layers are great for getting stuff out of the way.

Sketchers:

I consulted with some sketchup experts on another forum, and found out that you can change the color of individual lines:

Go to the same dialog box under "styles" that Pegs was talking about, but instead of selecting Color: All the same, select "by material". Then, select all the edges you want to color, and paint them using the bucket tool. Of course you can't put a "texture" on an edge, but there is a set of "color" textures. Choose one of those. It can be difficult to click on just the edge - it's easy to miss and hit the adjacent face by mistake. "Undo" is your friend! CB.

Thanks, got it!