The use of commercial application programs is well established in the local structural designrnoffices working in Ethiopia. Among the most widely used programs are SAP2000 andrnETABS by CSI, California, Berkeley.rnUser confidence in respect of analysis results is reasonably high for building structures orrnbridges whose lateral force resisting systems comprise 3-D rigid frames. For buildings withrnwall or dual wall-frame systems, however, the comparison is not so straight forward, and hasrnnot yet been systematically investigated and reported.rnMore recently some users while accepting the drawbacks in respect of the design of columnsrntend to accept the design results of walls as valid. Clearly, response of structural walls to axialrnload and biaxial bending is much more involved than their column counterpart.rnIn an effort to show the proximity and/or divergence of the results of ETABS with other softrnwares and analysis methods the following processes has been performed.rn1. Lateral load distribution results of ETABS were compared with those of the approximaternelastic analysis procedure for a system of walls.rn2. Column reinforcement results of ETABS were compared with those from interactionrncharts of EBCS 2 Part2.rn3. Reinforcement of the walls from ETABS was checked by software specially developedrnfor checking capacities of structural walls of any shape under normal load and biaxialrnbending.rnFrom the lateral load distribution comparison result, it was observed that there wererndifferences between the outputs of ETABS and the approximate elastic analysis. Thernpercentage difference varies from one wall arrangement type to another and wall section tornwall section. In case of the design results, column reinforcement areas obtained from ETABSrnwere larger than those from interaction charts of EBCS 2 Part 2. For the simple rectangularrnstructural walls considered, the reinforcement from ETABS was found to be insufficient tornresist the design actions on it. The same thing was observed on the L-shaped walls. Where asrnfor the C-shaped walls designed by ETABS the capacity to demand ratio were nearly 1.rnviirnBased on the comparison results of the design of a limited number of columns and walls, itrnmay be concluded that the design of walls and columns performed by ETABS may lie on thernsafe side or the unsafe side.