The three steps

01. Architectural design

Here we only watch that the concept is suitable for light gauge steel: spans, bracing wall lengths, opening layout, structural depths.

This is the cheapest moment to change anything. Concept design · Why the concept decides the cost.

02. Permit and detailed design

The structural part, fully taking into account that the structure will be LGS.

That is not the same as a general structural design: designing a thin-walled structure is about stability, the restraint and the screw pattern are designed values, and the build-up feeds back into the structure. The structural detailed design · Why thin-walled design differs.

03. Machine file

The shop drawings and machine program produced from the detailed design, tailored to that line’s parameters. The machine program: what we hand over.

Why it matters where you are

Because the steps cannot be skipped. If somebody asks for the third but the second does not exist, then either we produce the second or we would work from assumptions — and we do not do the latter. Input data.

The cost of stepping back

The lower down we join, the dearer it is to step back:

• at the first, a conversation,
• at the second, reworking the structural part,
• at the third, members already made can be at stake.

The common case

You have a design, just not for steel. Then the second and third steps have to be worked through again. When the design exists but not for steel.

The point

Three steps, with less room to move at each. We join at any of them — but from the third you cannot step back to the second cheaply.