Notes from Smart Steel Design in Today's Market Seminar
On October 31, I have visited a SMART Steel Design in Today's Market seminar, a half day long event in New York City, sponsored by Commercial Metals Company (CMC) Steel Products (formerly SMI Steel Products), Bentley Inc., and American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC). Below are short notes from the seminar.
The seminar started by a presentation analyzing the current situation in the structural steel market. It was interesting to learn that the construction market has been seeing decline in productivity during the several past decades (based on Construction & Non-Farm Labor Productivity Index by National Institute for Standards and Technology). The main issues to improve productivity in steel sector include understanding the steel supply chain (mill, HHS producer, joist manufacturer, service center, fabricator, erector, detailer, etc.), improving communication, and improving interoperability among various software applications, using innovative technology such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), or CIS/2 data format.
Second presentation discussed issues related to the design, analysis, and construction of castellated beams. Castellated beams are fabricated from regular rolled beams. The production of castellated beams starts by cutting a rolled beam into two pieces by a zig-zag cut in the beam's web. The two pieces are then offset and welded together, resulting in a beam with web openings and larger moment of inertia as a result.
Third presentation was an excellent, almost hands-on, review on Building Information Modeling capabilities. Representative of Bentley, Inc. demonstrated practical use of Bentley software to quickly create 3D model of multistory steel frame building, analyze it for gravity and lateral loads, perform code checks, extract quantities.
The seminar was a great event, filled with practical and useful information. If you have a chance, I would recommend to attend one of future CMC seminars!
-OK
External Links
- Ondrej Kalny's blog
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