For this practice exercise, I used a steel frame system since those are fairly common in commercial buildings. I used W10x49 columns and W12x26 beams when designing my framing system. I tried my best to stay out of the way of stairs, rooms, and openings, but it seems it was unavoidable.
When running through the model online, it is clear that there are beams running through hallways and some offices. While I was able to avoid the elevators, stairs and atriums, I ended up running them in other spaces that should have been avoided as well. Regarding my strategy, I tried to run an outline along the building, and then use that outline to run a pattern within, but I think next time I will work on identifying all of the rooms better that cannot have beams running within them. With that regard, I don’t think I quite met the designer’s full intent.
I think too another aspect is that we CAN have beams running as long as we make the ceilings high enough and we can hide them in the ceilings.
This definitely was good practice that I will use when designing the structural system for my building.