The FRAMECAD system

What belongs here

FRAMECAD is not a machine and not a piece of software, but the two together: a design program that also does the engineering, a machine range that produces the profiles from the design, machine control software and a production management interface. At the end of the chain the designer’s model becomes a program that can be sent to the machine, with no human redrawing in between.

This topic has its own category because most questions are not about light gauge steel in general, but about this particular system: what the machine can handle, which code the software calculates to, what can be exported from it, and what happens if someone later wants something different.

How to read it

If you are interested in the machine, start with the machine range and the profile capacity: this decides what can be manufactured at all, and up to what building size it makes sense.

If you are interested in the design side, the Steelwise article explains what runs in the software, and the code article explains which design standard it calculates to — for Hungarian projects this is the most important question, and the answer is better than many expect.

If you are facing a decision, read the two articles on design freedom and on vendor lock-in one after the other. They were deliberately written as a pair: one says what you gain, the other what you give up.

What is not here

Prices, commercial terms, comparisons between manufacturers and “which system is better” judgements. This knowledge base describes what a system can demonstrably do — the decision belongs to the investor.

The point

The FRAMECAD articles rest on two sources: the manufacturer’s public technical documentation and everyday design practice. Where the two differ, the article says so rather than blurring it.