SteelCad is a program made especially for the steel industry. Designed for steel detailers, contractors and fabricators, SteelCad automates everything from the erection drawing phase to detailing, computer numerical control (CNC) machining, and production control.

SteelCad is capable of ASD, LSD, and LRFD design, is compatible with American and Canadian steel industry standards, and details in Imperial units, metric units, or both.

SteelCad can detail beams, columns, vertical and horizontal bracing, stairs, and ladders. It is capable of detailing complex framing conditions such as skewed and/or sloped beams, cantelevered beams, lintels, wall mounted beams, cambered beams, tapered members, plate girders, moment connections, truss girders, joist connections, reinforced columns, stairs with a landing in the middle, or caged ladders. It allows you to add handrail connections or curb angles, pour stops, toe plate, or outriggers as well.

What&qout;s more, it designs end connections for you using either standard AISC or CISC design properties (combined with contract specifications – see Contract Specifications) or data provided by an engineer (such as point loading conditions or end reactions). SteelCad can design end connections using bolted or welded clip angles, slotted clip angles, single-sided clip angles, shear plates, knife connections, WT clips, bolted top and bottom plates, seat angles, or even thru plates. SteelCad also creates gather sheets, interfaces with CNC software, and helps you keep a handle on production control, from inventory to shipping.

The 3D modeling environment allows you to view your entire building from any angle or height, at any level of magnification. What&qout;s more, from the 3D environment you can view the detail of any individual piece with a simple click of the mouse. Or, if you like to draw in a piece-by-piece format to avoid getting caught not having the entire job ready for the shop at a moment&qout;s notice, then you&qout;ll love SteelCad&qout;s mark matching feature. Simply put, you detail a building from the inside out (horizontal bracing, then interior beams, then vertical bracing, then exterior beams, then columns) so that as you are finished with a piece, you can simply tell SteelCad where it connects on the mating member and SteelCad passes all the connection information from one piece to the other, right down to the field bolts. That&qout;s right, no more counting field bolts and no need to worry whether an end connection matches the mating piece.