Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Importance of queen ties,braces in queen post barn

I am always a fan of the Dutch-English hybrid design that seemed to originate in the Northeast(especially in my Hudson valley area) "Queen post barn". There are lots of different variations on this barn design. I am wondering from an engineering perspective how important the queen tie is to the design? Additionally, how important the braces from queen post to tie are? Could you eliminate the braces and leave the tie or even eliminate both the tie and braces? It seems almost preferable to have stout standing braces(perhaps large enough to have some tensile capacity) from queen post to main girt below (near the brace connection from exterior post). In my mind the load is transferred from the rafters to the purlin plates to the queen posts and its purlin braces. The so called queen "ties" are not tying just adding rigidity and the brace purpose the same. For the purpose of floor plan, would you be able to eliminate the braces or the queen tie entirely and add standing braces to the main girt? Many barns did do this, but I wonder if it is a good idea to design with? I think its a hard question to answer. Perhaps someone has already done some engineering on queen post barn load tranfers ,and has come up with some insight. I cant be the only one who is attracted to these American-born barn designs. tb