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In these videos, we walk you through building a fully connected lateral load path for your projects. You’ll trace lateral loads from the initial wind pressure through the diaphragm and all the way into your final shear wall design. These videos use a San Francisco–based project to demonstrate a four-part workflow showing how load linking keeps your design consistent and code compliant.
Why link loads? Instead of manually copying values between wind, diaphragm, and shear wall calculators, link them. When you change wind speed or building geometry in one place, all linked calculations update automatically, keeping your design consistent and compliant.
This overview introduces the lateral load path workflow: tracing loads from wind pressure through the diaphragm and into your shear wall design.

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What wind load linking covers

Wind loads link automatically only along the lateral path: Wind Loads calculator → Diaphragm Analysis → Wood Shear Wall or Masonry Shear Wall. When you change the wind inputs, those linked calculations update. Wind loads do not link into gravity design calculators, such as Wood Beam, Steel Beam, headers, rafters, or girders. You can’t link the output of the Wind Loads calculator into these calculators. If the wind calculation changes, they don’t update automatically.
To include wind in a beam, header, rafter, or girder design, enter the wind pressure manually as an area load or line load in that calculator. If you later change the wind calculation, update those manual loads yourself.
For linking gravity loads between design calculators, see Link Loads and Reactions Between Calculators.

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In this section

Set Up Wind Load Calculations

Configure project defaults, set up a wind load calculator with the envelope procedure, and prepare to link to diaphragms.

Create a Diaphragm Calculator

Link wind loads into a diaphragm calculator and set the tributary height.

Link Diaphragm Shear

Link diaphragm shear into a shear wall calculator and size sheathing, studs and hold-downs.