Over the years working on Mass Timber projects and trying to quickly convey new concepts or developments I often wish I had a professional set of sketching tools for PDF applications. While I was able to cobble together my own collection of Mass Timber tools, there was always something missing. 

Now there is a market ready solution, bettertoolchest, that holds over 500 quick sketch systems for connections, screws and product layups. While the product does carry some costs, for any Mass Timber design professional if you have not already developed your own comprehensive sketch package, this would be a no-brainer! 

Check out the tool chest here:
https://bettertoolchest.com/

DISCLAIMER: I am not the product holder, nor have I received any monetary value for posting this tool kit. it is often something I wish I had better access to and thought should be shared with a larger audience. 

Wow, it has been awhile, nearly 5 years in fact! Some maybe wondering what happened to the website if anyone was still able to follow. As a brief update:

1)  Our original website, WoodSkyscrapers.com was hacked and held hostage for an absorbant amount of money. Instead of paying the fees I made a decision to abandon the website and start new with WoodSkyscrapers.org. During this process we lost a large amount of our traffic and readership. 

2) Life caught up and working full-time + for a major Mass Timber supplier, the gusto to dive deep into Mass Timber at home everyday wore off a bit, and I stopped putting major effort into site updates. 

3) The site served a large amount of its original purpose; to show a global body of Mass Timber, Tall Timber, projects around the world and demonstrate to developers, clients, AEC, and AHJs that this was not a just local phenomenon or unreliable construction system out of nowhere. 

I would love to continue tracking Tallwood Mass Timber projects around the world, however a few things have changed. Mass Timber has officially entered the building code in many jurisdictions, including the US and Canada for mid-rise construction. This means that while many Tallwood projects are being developed and proposed the press releases on them are smaller and smaller. Aside from exploiting professional bidding knowledge, a lot of this is not publicly available information and therefor can't be published until a later date. Along with this the amount of construction and proposed projects is massive, likely some 40 per year throughout North America and I would hazard at least another 40-60 in Europe. There are also a number of other organizations partially tracking this information, although I don't see it being carried at a true global scale anywhere. 

Will there be future updates? 
I truly don't know yet, just having out first child, I have finally had some time to cool down and think (in very small increments) about what the use of such an organization might and how it fits into the current global framework. I believe there is plenty of room for improvement on the construction and organizational side of Mass Timber project deployment, and possible a potential to lean into these topics. 

​All the best,