Design Process

At South West Steel Construction we have our own in-house design team. Our design offices consist of trained steel draughtsmen who work with the steel detailing software Tekla to construct fabrication drawings for the fabricators in our factories.

With many years of experience between them, they begin designing our buildings in a 3D model, adding the frame, connections, plates and finalising with the roof and cladding. Our facilities enable us to design a computerised product so realistic that it looks like it could be mistaken for a photograph on site.

We are also able to design cladding drawings, roof layouts  Z purlin drawings (which we can send to the manufacturer to design them exactly as we want.)

We also produce material lists, load lists and ensure the weight of the building does not exceed the allowed weight on our lorries.

We custom design our fabrication drawings to ensure that they can be easily understood on the shop floor and therefore reduce any risk of errors in the fabrication process.

Tekla Structures is Building Information Modelling (BIM) software that enables the creation and management of accurately detailed, highly constructable 3D structural models regardless of material or structural complexity. Tekla models can be used to cover the entire building process from conceptual design to fabrication, erection and construction management.

We estimate our buildings with an innovative fabrication software called StruM.I.S. This software enables us to keep track of stock levels, estimate our buildings in the most economical and affordable manner without compromising on quality.

StruM.I.S is best known for helping manage businesses who need to keep track of enquiries, prices, stock levels as it implements a sophisticated system which is easy to use.

Once an enquiry has been taken it is then assigned to an estimator who will then work out an overall price for a Steel Frame Building from start to finish. It also allows you to add labour costs, fixing costs and it can even work out the most efficient and economical way of cutting steel depending on the materials you have in stock.

There is also an option in StruM.I.S for you implement a CAD interface which allows the material requirements list to be imported from other systems including design and steel detailing/BIM authoring tools as well as Microsoft® Excel and Word.