Simply draw the outline of a deck and DeckBuild does the rest. Footings, posts, beams, joists, blocking, and bracing, all sized to your building code and optimized for the most cost-efficient layout that still passes. What takes an hour with span tables and a calculator happens in seconds.
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The old way vs. DeckBuild
Sizing a frame by hand means flipping through span tables, second-guessing proper sizing, and not really knowing if it's less cost to either add another post vs upsize the beams. DeckBuild does the structural work for you and never hands you an illegal layout.
Span charts & a calculator
DeckBuild
How it works
DeckBuild starts with your setup: span tables, lumber species and grades, footing recipes, and frost line. It also reads the site loads for the design, including soil bearing, snow, and dead load.
DeckBuild goes through dozens of joist-size, beam-size, and structural post placement combinations and scores each one using your real material cost, not a rule of thumb.
DeckBuild keeps the lowest-cost candidate that passes every check including footing capacity and joist and beam spans and cantilevers. Legal and the one that costs the least.
Under the hood
DeckBuild runs a cost-minimizing search against real code tables and handles details that actually get flagged before build begins.
Footings by real load
DeckBuild calculates the true tributary load on every post, then picks the lowest cost footing from your catalog that carries it and clears your frost line, adding a post automatically if a footing would be overloaded.
Ledger vs. freestanding
Ledgered against the house or fully freestanding, DeckBuild's support logic changes to match, placing footings, beams and joists for the way each deck actually carries its load.
Braces by height
Corner braces and underside V-bracing are added automatically as the deck gets taller. These are user-overridable height-driven details that keep an elevated deck stiff and code-compliant.
Splices, sistering & posts
Staggered beam splices over posts, joists sistered past stock length, and company-configurable cost-efficient post sizing from 4×4 up to 6×6 or always-6×6 if that's how you build.
You stay in control
DeckBuild generates a complete permit-ready, cost-efficient framing plan. And every component stays within your control: add, remove, or move footings and change footing sizes; add, remove, or move beams and change beam sizing; edit joist spacing and joist sizing; along with dozens of other configurations. DeckBuild instantly re-validates the entire framing layout to ensure code compliance. Anything over-span, overloaded, or under-supported gets flagged, with the exact member highlighted on the drawing, so problems surface on screen instead of in the field.
And it doesn't stop at the deck
Straight answers
Yes. You choose the code each job is designed to (the 2015 IRC including the AWC DCA 6, 2018 IRC, 2021 IRC, or 2024 IRC) and DeckBuild sizes joists, beams, posts, and footings against that code’s own span and cantilever tables, tuned to the lumber species you use, your footings, your frost line, and your local code. DeckBuild doesn’t replace a licensed design professional’s review/stamp, so if your project needs that you can have them review/stamp DeckBuild’s plans.
Yes. The span tables are editable for your jurisdiction, and you can reset them back to IRC defaults anytime. Your species, grades, footing recipes, and build methods all flow into every solve automatically.
You can override anything. Change beam and joist sizing, footing type and placement, add or move posts and more, all per deck. Every change you make is re-checked against code, so you stay in control without giving up the safety net.
DeckBuild takes dozens of inputs into consideration when auto-framing, including finding the most cost-efficient combination of footings, posts, beams, and joists, all based on your actual code and your actual costs. Instead of defaulting to always using 2×10s, or adding beams where hanging beams is better, DeckBuild's solver automatically tries dozens of legal framing combinations in mere seconds and keeps the lowest-cost one by right-sizing members, using fewer footings where the load allows, hanging one beam off another when that costs less than a new post and footing, and many other optimizations. Doing this has saved our builders an average of about $542 in material per deck.
Start your free 14-day trial, draw a real deck, and watch DeckBuild size the entire frame: code-compliant, cost-optimized, and tailored to how you build. No credit card required.