Frederick Pole Shed Designer

Elevations

Click a door or window to open its settings in the Doors and windows list. Drag from its middle to move it, drag any edge (the blue bands) to resize one way, or drag a corner square to change width and height together. An opening outlined in red has a failing check.

3D preview

Drag to turn the shed and tilt the view. Doors are light, windows are blue. This is a massing model for checking proportions, not a rendering.

Wall framing

Each wall seen from outside with the siding off. A window that sits wholly inside a door is part of the door, so it has no wall king studs. In a site-built sliding or double door it is framed into the door leaf with a rail above and below and a stile each side; in a walk or overhead door it comes factory glazed. Every other window gets a king stud each side, or full posts where it replaces a post. Doors, windows and openings can be dragged and resized here the same way as on the elevations, and the framing rebuilds around them as you go. Where a door or window sits on a post, the post is removed, a full post is added each side, and those posts, their footings and the beam above are sized automatically. Every other opening gets full-height king studs each side, a header, jack studs under door headers, a sill under windows, and cripple studs above and below so the sheathing has something to nail to. Walls are named by the way they face on the site plan (Front is toward the front street), so the names change when you turn the shed. Use the switch here, at the top of the page, or in the Building panel to change between pole barn and stud-framed construction. On sheathed walls the plywood is shown see-through with its sheet joints dashed in blue: sheets run to the wall corners and meet on the centre of a post. Green is pressure-treated lumber, tan is standard framing lumber. Sizes are typical post-frame practice for planning and pricing. Final sizes come from the engineer or the supplier's stamped plan.

Lumber and cut list

The framing views on the Framing tab are free and complete - this is the quantity take-off from them.

Estimate and quote

Labour, waste, markup and tax below are part of the design and stay with it. Pricing and quoting are prepared on the server.

Build sheets

Site sheets for the crew: layout and squaring, build order, fastening schedule, truss order and which pieces to cut from which board. Fastener sizes follow the IRC fastening table as I recall it; check them against your code book.

Structural check

Allowable-stress checks of the framing for the construction style selected at the top of the page, using NDS wood design formulas and the Frederick design loads. Lumber is taken as Southern Pine No. 2, pressure treated where it touches the ground or concrete.

• Skid foundation: floor joists are checked as simple spans between skids for a 40 psf floor load, with deflection held to L/360. Each skid is checked for bearing on the gravel along its whole length: the outer skids carry the roof, walls and the edge of the floor, the inner ones carry floor only. With the number of skids on Automatic, the designer uses the fewest that pass. Anchors are counted from wind sliding and overturning against 60% of the building's own weight, never fewer than four, each taken at 500 lb working load.
• How each member is modelled: studs carry roof load and wind as pinned columns the full wall height, braced sideways by the sheathing. Headers are simple spans carrying the roof strip above them, sized automatically from doubled 2×6 up to LVL, with enough jack studs each side for bearing. Sheathing is checked over the stud spacing. Uplift is resisted by the weight of the slab edge or the building, through anchor bolts or ground anchors.
• How each member is modelled: eave posts are fixed in the ground and held at the top by the roof, so wind moment at grade is wH²/8. Beams, headers, girts and rafters are simple spans under uniform load. Plywood sheathing is laid long way across the posts and checked in bending and deflection over the spacing between supports (posts and any studs), using typical rated-sheathing stiffness and strength; horizontal sheet joints between posts need tongue-and-groove edges or blocking, and the sheathing's bracing (shear wall) value is assumed, not calculated. Embedment uses the IBC 1807.3.2.1 pole formula with doubled lateral soil pressure (IBC 1806.3.4) and the footing diameter as the pole width, which needs concrete or compacted-gravel backfill. Uplift is resisted by the soil column over the footing, which needs a cleat or concrete collar fixed to the post.
• Door openings: where a door is 6 ft or wider, or any door or window takes the place of a post, the tool picks the smallest standard beam over the opening, a full post on each side of the doorway (never smaller than your chosen post size), footing pads and embedment depth that pass the same checks, and uses them in the framing views and lumber lists. Beam choices run from doubled 2×8 up to triple 1¾ × 18 LVL (LVL taken as typical 1.9E, Fb 2,600 psi). On a gable end wall the end truss has to be a structural truss so it can span the opening.
• Not checked here: truss design (order trusses from a manufacturer to the loads shown), roof and wall diaphragm or knee bracing that holds the post tops, connections and fasteners, purlins, drifting or unbalanced snow, and your actual soil. Snow is applied at the full 30 psf ground value with no slope reduction.
• Fixing failures: click a failing line to choose how to fix it, or let the designer fix failures automatically. Automatic fixes pick the first method that works, in this order of preference: a larger or stronger member, then closer spacing. Each correction is listed above the table and can be changed to another method or undone.
• What this is: a preliminary sizing check, not a sealed design. Lumber design values are standard published figures entered from memory, so have them confirmed. The City can require drawings sealed by a Maryland engineer for a permitted post-frame building.

Site plan

Code review