Structural Steel Detailing

Hi,

New to the community. I have come from Sketch Up and Fusion.

Really love the GUI and the flow and feel of Shapr and I am excited for my new CAD journey.

I have a small one man metal fabrication business. I draw and fabricate structural steel and other items like stairs and balustrades for houses in Australia.

I am after some advice on a work flow that I should work towards in Shapr.

See below my current job.

Sketch up model of current job

As you can see I draw a lot of repetitive elements but they do change a little bit here and there. Every job is different but the steel profiles are always similar.

Should I create a “3D library” of steel beams and columns and pull them in to shapr?

Am I best drawing everything from scratch on each job?

My workflow at the minute is to import a DXF plan from the architect and build a model on top of that.

I also need to export the base plates and cleat faces for laser cutting, what is the best way to go about this, do I make a copy of each one and creat a drawing and export the dxf?

I have seen some people on the forums talk about projecting a sketch. In fusion you can right click on a sketch export it pretty easily.

Would love to hear from some one doing similar work, or exporting to laser cutting to get steel cut and folded etc.

Cheers

Hi Dylan, welcome to the fold. I’m new too and am hoping to be able to export sketches at some point. I have created a number of elements and reuse them over and over, particularly door knobs. I’ve never had a problem with this, but other than that, my advice is limited.

Nice to meet you Harrison. I’ll keep learning the software, sounds promising.

Cheers