All wall types within the Basic Wall family have an instance property called Structural Usage, which can have the following values:
| Shear | Rigid planar surfaces that inherently resist lateral thrusts of shear. |
| Bearing | Walls that support a vertical load in addition to their own weight. |
| Non-bearing | Walls that define and divide spaces and support no vertical load except their own weight. |
| Structural combined | Walls that serve more than one purpose. |
When you use the Wall tool, Revit assumes you are placing partition walls. Whichever wall type you select, the default Structural Usage value is non-bearing. When you use the Structural Wall tool, and select the same wall type, the default Structural Usage value is bearing. In either case, the value is read-only, but you can change it after the wall is placed.
Typical structural wall