ARCHITECTURE Heel Analysis Methods. When I design heels for a truss, I try to not use more wood than I need. Throwing wood at a problem doesn’t always fix things. For example, I have a slider on this heel as the heels are high. The top chord doesn’t specifically need them for stability or deflection. I have a pinned bearing and I can analyze the heel with a few different methods. In these two illustrations the red line represents the analog of the truss. I analyze with a single analog on the heel and my slider is several feet long as the next joint is the web. In the right…