This paper is concerned with the application of a Rayleigh-Ritz based substructure synthesis method to the dynamic analysis of N-story framed structures. The objective is to obtain an accurate and low-order dynamic model of the distributed structure. In this regard, a numerical example demonstrates that the analysis by means of the substructure synthesis method is superior to the one performed through the finite element method. To be specific, the speed of eigensolution convergence is higher with the former method. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.