Wood structure design software is a professional core and characteristic course for the wood structure construction major of Nanjing Forestry University. It is an important design tool for wood structure professionals to engage in professional work and related to the cultivation of comprehensive quality of wood structure professionals. The teaching content involves a lot of international wood structure knowledge. However, the class hour of this course is quite limited which makes it difficult to teach. In order to accommodate the characteristics and difficulties of the course, a series of innovative models are proposed in terms of teaching content, teaching methods, course evaluation and practical activities to cultivate the students' comprehensive ability. Teaching is based on classroom lectures, supplemented by online question and ask of software professional training engineers, and academic reports of foreign experts. Students are organized to complete complex model design together with students of the same major from foreign universities, use the software knowledge they have learned to participate in wood structure model design competition, and participate in the practice of digital design and processing of wood structures. Teaching practice shows that the teaching mode of wood structure design software has achieved good results and the students' comprehensive ability has been significantly improved which laid a solid foundation for work and study in the future.