How Customers Benefit from Using The Steel Detailer and SOLIDWORKS

Are you currently using SOLIDWORKS to design and detail your projects or exporting steelwork to other packages for steel detailing? If you didn’t know, you can keep your structure in SOLIDWORKS and have it automatically detailed with The Steel Detailer. Just imagine how much time that would save you. No more manually managing item insertion, mating, naming and drawing number creation, or interpolating data between packages and living through the nightmare of managing changes between them.

The core features of The Steel Detailer include:

Automated naming, drawing numbers and filing
Welded member, sections, bolted connection and plate libraries
Global weldment profile library
Automated detailing of steel sections and plates
Batch drawing management
Material take off reporting and bolt list creation
Section, plate and part consolidation
Large model handling built-in process
Analysis file creation
DSTV CNC export

Let’s investigate these core features a bit further:

Automated Naming, Drawing Numbers & Filing

Due to the sheer number of files used in most structures, having an automated filing system is essential. The Steel Detailer’s core is built around this functionality and reduces the need to even think about naming files or adding/managing drawing and mark numbers.

Welded member, sections, bolted connection and plate libraries

No need to search through previous projects or multiple locations looking for components, the Steel Detailer’s pictorial-based library and storage features allow you to insert components (such as welded frames, beams, trusses, bolted connections, stairs, handrails, etc.) along with their associated drawings directly into your project. As it inserts these components, the ‘automated filing system’ names them, assigns drawing numbers and adds any bolts to the bolt list.

The Steel Detailer’s library comes with a comprehensive range of components and connections to suit member profiles from most areas of the world.

If you have to create a new connection or component for you project that isn’t currently in your library, these can be easily added to your library, along with all associated components and drawings, with one of the TSD utilities.

Global weldment profile library

The Steel Detailer has over 10,000 weldment profiles matching sections from all around the world (Australia, Canada, US, UK, EU, South Africa, China).

Automated detailing of steel sections and plates

The time taken to detail sections and plates can be repetitively slow to say the least. The Steel Detailer can detail a section that would normally take you five to ten minutes to detail in less than 10 seconds.

Batch drawing management

An absolute must in any steel detailing application is the ability to manage many drawings. The Steel Detailer’s document manager has batch processes, such as revision control, sheet template replacement, pdf/dwg/dxf creation. Imagine being able to revise a drawing, change the sheet template, update the titleblock data and then create PDFs all in one go on many different drawing types such as plates, sections, welded members and construction erection drawings.

Material take-off reporting

The Steel Detailer can export SOLIDWORKS data to MS excel for cut lists, fastener schedules, vendor-supplied items, concrete volumes, square metres of grating, linear meters of hand railing and a dispatch list of every welded member and its related components. The Steel Detailer’s fasteners are even counted when they are hidden and excluded from the BOM.

Section, plate and part consolidation

There are so many components in a structural model and many are similar. The Steel Detailer reduces the number of components and drawings by consolidating like components throughout your entire project, then adds the total number of each item required, for the project, to the drawings.

Large model handling built in process

The Steel Detailer uses assemblies and parts in its processes and multi-body modelling is removed. This results in large 3D-modelled projects having the computer’s CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD sharing the resources instead of all of the resources being bottlenecked at the CPU, which has been proven to happen with multi-body structural modelling.

Analysis file creation

Structural Analytical packages are designed to simplify structural design. The Steel Detailer has a feature that creates native files for many structural analytical packages with a bi-directional link for syncing between them.

DSTV CNC export

This new additional feature allows the export of structural data to NC1 Files for DSTV CNC fabrication. Sections such I, C, SHS, RHS, L and plate can be exported to NC1.