What is Steel Detailing?
Steel Detailing is the production of shop drawings for a steel fabricator. A steel fabricator is a company who provides, and sometimes – installs, the steel framework for a construction project. A steel detailer’s duty is to generate the drawings that the fabricator will use to cut and weld all the necessary members together. A steel detailer also generates the layout instructions to facilitate the installation and erection of the steel framework. So, a steel detailer is like an engineer? Or an architect? No. A steel detailer uses the architect AND engineer’s plans to produce the shop drawings for the fabricator. A very generalized description of this relationship can be described like this… the architect designs the look of the structure, and the engineer calculates the required sizes and locations of the steel to make the structure safe and strong. Finally, the steel detailer uses both sets of plans to provide detailed drawings with exact dimensions and lengths for each individual
