By Ivy Max
The process of generating a detailed drawing of a structure that is based on steel is known as Structural Steel Detailing. It is one of the most important and mandatory processes in all types of construction and manufacturing activities like the erection of commercial and residential buildings, institutes and factories, and shipbuilding. This process helps an engineer to derive broad ideas of how all steel components will be brought to use collectively while a structure is being made. Process of steel detailing acts as an important communication link that bonds engineers, contractors, architects, fabricators, and other key professionals that are responsible individually and as a group for bringing about great levels of accuracy at every stage. The steel detailed drawings also assist engineers to collect the know-how of the connection details within each component along with detail and parts detail of assembled components. Steel Detailing a section of Structural BIM services is usually provided by steel fabrication services firm and the ones who generate these drawings are referred to as a Steel Detailer. Structural Steel Detailing is a crucial process of Structural engineering and needs to have nearly 99% accuracy, failing which or even a minor error could pose a major loss of time and money.
Basic Usage of Structural Detailing Services:
These are mostly used for Construction and Civil Engineering industries and now have been spreading widely in the facet of Structural BIM too. Detailed drawings of the steel structures of a building usually comprise the Bill of Materials (BOM), planning ideas, location of components, dimensions of steel components, bolting and welding details, material specifications, etc. Structural frame design, bridge structure design, anchor bolt setting drawings, steel connection detailing, beam connection with concrete wall detailing, column connection detailing, sheet metal layout drawings, etc are some of the common examples of Structural detailing drawings.
Steel Detailing includes the development of detailed drawings for contractors and fabricators which also includes estimates and plans along with important tasks and other reports.
This process mainly has two main types of drawings namely shop drawings and erection drawings:
Structural Shop Drawings: Detail drawings mention every minute detail of an individual steel component or pieces like beams, columns, joists, braces, trusses, and many more that the steel fabricator must make. Drawings like these have component dimensions and sizes, material specifications, bolting, welding, and painting details, surface specs, and all the various information related to the fabrication of each of the components. These drawings do not mention details about the installation and erection of steel components and are only relevant to fabrications alone.
Erection Drawings: These represent plans that have dimensions along with specifying the location of each of the steel components within the overall structure. These drawings mention detailed and directed information about the position of each component with the requirements for their installations along with all the related fieldwork information like installing wedge anchors, bolts, and welding spots.
In BIM Modeling services structural steel detailing solution is utilized for performing detailed structural analysis of a building, structural steel assemblies, BIM structural shop drawings, rebar detailing, detailing structural components, steel buildings, beam calculation, and steel furniture drawings, etc.
Some of the Standards for Steel Detailing:
The responsibility of the structural engineer is the design part, strength, and integrity of steel structures but complying with major dimensions and building codes is the role of the architect. The responsibility of the detailer is to get the steel drawings approved by the architect and structural engineer before it is released for fabrication work.
The detailer must comply with the standards of steel detailing of various countries like:
➢ Canadian Institute of Steel Construction
➢ American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC)
➢ Australian Institute of Steel Construction
➢ American Welding Society (AWS)
➢ Euro Codes and British Standard Codes
➢ National Institute of Steel Detailing (NISD)
Some of the Software that is being used for detailing services of steel structures are Tekla, AutoCAD, Revit, and SDS/2. It is with these tools that we get the capability to accurately develop 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional modeling views of steel detailing drawings of Structural BIM Services.
Some noteworthy benefits of Structural Detailing services are:
- Helps build sturdy building structure
- Aids in getting a clear picture of a planned structure
- Help save project costs due to enabling the engineers with estimating required materials
- It is used in diverse industries like automobile, aviation, chemical plants, shipbuilding, marine, among others.
Having seen how important structural detailing services are to a building we also need to gauge the hassles posed by the climatic change to a building structure. These uncertain conditions make it unpredictable to analyze where and when this natural calamity might hit the structure and to what extent. So, a perfect structural designing company along with BIM services can help one be prepared as they implement designs that are better in surviving these natural disasters that impose on the structure along with safeguarding the residents inside it. Ultimately it is important to note that the long-lasting strength of the building is generally determined by the quality of the Structural Steel Detailing brought out during the early days of the designing and construction of a project.
