The FRAMECAD system in Hungarian practice

A machine is not a legal category

The most common misunderstanding is that a technology is “approved” or “not approved” in Hungary. It does not work like that. The legislation is not about machine brands but about how the building comes into being and what is used to verify its compliance.

From this point of view three questions matter, and all three are answered by the project, not by the production line.

1. Prefabricated panel or frame erected on site

The Hungarian fire regulation sets a separate requirement for buildings built with lightweight technology, and the official interpretation separates a building assembled from prefabricated panels from a frame erected on site and clad afterwards. The two are different legal categories requiring different verification.

This question is decided by the method of construction, not by which machine produced the profiles: the same machine can produce panels in a plant and cut site-assembled members. In detail: when no system document is required.

2. What the installed product certifies

On the profile side the key is the CE marking and the declaration of performance: this certifies that the section produced from the coil was made correctly, so the structural calculation really can use that cross-section. The system supplies manufacturing data for this — which program, which material, which production job — but product verification comes from the material and the manufacturer.

3. Fire safety

Fire compliance is the most sensitive point of the technology, and no design software solves it. A load-bearing wall is verified either by a technical assessment or by project-specific, signed fire design or simulation. The software’s structural model can be an input to that, not the verification.

Where the system does help a great deal

Native Eurocode

A Hungarian project has to be designed to the Eurocodes, and for Europe the software calculates to EN 1990, EN 1993-1-3 and EN 1998-1. That is not a formality: no foreign standards system has to be translated, and the member-by-member check is produced in the system the Hungarian engineer and the design checker can both read. The parameters of the national annex — snow and wind zone, terrain category, factors — still have to be entered correctly by the designer.

Traceable production

Production jobs, the machine program and the digital quality control forms together show what was made, when and with what settings. In a later dispute this is verifiable fact, as opposed to general system declarations.

Documented output for the other disciplines

The model can be handed over in IFC, drawings in PDF, quantities in XLSX. This is usable material for the design checker, the building authority and the other designers.

The point

The system is a good tool, but not a verification. In Hungarian practice the same things always decide: how the house is built, what the installed product’s paperwork says, and who signs the structural design.

This is not legal advice

The summary above reflects our reading of the referenced legislation in September 2026. Regulation changes, and on a specific project the position of the acting authority and the fire safety engineer governs.

Sources

FRAMECAD Knowledge Hub (“Engineering codes supported in Steelwise”, “How to export files from Steelwise”, Nexa documentation), retrieved in September 2026; Hungarian fire regulation 54/2014. (XII. 5.) BM, Section 13, and the related official interpretation.