Glulam Building: Start to Finish – Part Three

Welcome to our “Glulam Building: Start to Finish” series. Our goal is to provide an overview – from idea to completion – of a glulam building, from the perspective of a glulam manufacturer and designer.


Part 3: Modeling and Detailing


With the design phase of the project complete, we move into detailing. From this point forward, the fluid and iterative processes of building ideas and design have ended. We are now working on something fixed – a digital version of our final product and shop drawings for production.


Part 3A: Basic Layout


Before glulam components and connections can be fabricated and built into a structure, they are modeled in 3D on a computer. This is a detailed and exact process… a finished model will have thousands of interconnected elements. Changes to a completed model can be time consuming and error prone. Therefore it is critical to start with an accurate basic layout.


At a minimum, the following basic layout items should be known and set before modeling begins:

• Overall dimensions of building
• Slopes of roofs
• Top of glulam elevations
• Bottom of baseplate elevations
• Column grid dimensions

Clouds around missing dimensions for a Pitch and Taper Pavilion