SDS/2 Detailing Capacity for Steel Fabricators

Fabricators use outsourced detailing when awarded work reaches detailing faster than in-house detailers can absorb it: several jobs released in the same month, a misc steel backlog behind the structural packages, a detailer out on leave, or a bid season that ties up the team on takeoffs. Outside capacity covers the peak without adding permanent salary.

The SDS/2 detailing services page covers the platform, and structural steel detailing covers the full scope of a primary framing package.

Overflow works when the package boundary is clear. Agree what Vertex details, whether a whole job, a building area, an erection sequence or the misc steel scope, and who owns each connection at the boundary. Your shop standards are set up in SDS/2 before modeling, one person on your side answers scope questions, and every issue carries a tracked revision.

A five-person team has finite capacity, and it is better to say so than to overbook. Hours are estimated from your documents at intake and the schedule is agreed before work starts, so a large package is phased rather than squeezed. If you know a heavy release is coming, send the documents early.

Material takeoffs are one of Vertex's standard deliverables, and they are useful at bid stage: quantities of shapes, plate, tube and miscellaneous steel taken from the contract drawings, grouped the way your estimator prices work. The takeoff reflects the bid documents as issued, so gaps and conflicts in those documents are listed rather than filled in.

Vertex does not price your bid. Shop labor, erection, markups and risk stay with your estimator. What bid-stage support gives you is a quantity base your estimator did not have to build by hand during the busiest weeks of the year.

Yes, when the standards are sent before modeling starts. Piece-mark conventions, connection preferences, sheet templates, bill of material format and NC settings are set up in SDS/2 from your standards document or from previously approved drawings, then reused on every later package. The first submittal is where any differences show, so review it more closely than later ones.

What to send with the first package:

• Piece-mark and ship-mark conventions, including prefixes
• Preferred connection types, bolt gauges and weld practices, within the Engineer of Record's design
• Sheet templates and sheet sizes
• Bill of material columns and grouping
• NC file format and machine requirements
• Two or three approved drawing sets that show how your shop likes details drawn

Fabricators receive NC files and reports generated from the same SDS/2 model revision as the drawings: DSTV NC1 files for beam lines, saws and plate and angle processors, KISS files for fabrication management software, shop and field bolt lists, material takeoffs and bills of material. Tell the team your machines and software at intake so the output matches.

NC files are reissued whenever the drawings they belong to are revised. See NC files and CNC integration for what to tell a detailer about your equipment.

An in-house US detailer is estimated to cost about $45–$90 per productive hour before software, against $15–20 per hour outsourced. The bigger difference for fabricators is idle time: salary continues between bids, while outsourced hours are billed only when a package exists. Outsourcing still costs your project manager's review time and first-package onboarding.

The in-house figure is an illustrative estimate, not a quote or a claim about any company. It assumes a $60,000–$90,000 salary, payroll taxes and benefits at 25–35% of salary, $2,000–$5,000 a year for equipment and training, and 1,400–1,700 productive hours. The assumptions and arithmetic are laid out on the steel detailing rates page.

The published reference project was detailed for a fabricator: HSS frame assemblies with 1" Armatherm 500 series thermal breaks, for an airport terminal rehabilitation and addition in New England. It shows the output a fabricator gets: frame detail sheets with bills of material, separate field bolt lists, and Rev A to Rev 0 in six days.

The bills of material carried ship marks, minor marks, quantities, lengths, grades and unit weights, and the thermal break connections were detailed through to the bolts, washers and bushings on the field bolt list. The case study has the full specification, and structural thermal break detailing explains what changes in a thermally broken connection.

RFIs and markups move in writing. Vertex drafts RFIs with sheet and grid references and sends them to you for submission through your contractual channel. Markups come back as PDFs. Anything sent by the end of your workday reaches the team in India before its day begins and is worked during the US night, ready for your next morning.

Batch questions at the end of the day, mark urgent items as urgent, and keep one contact on your side for answers. Every drawing is checked by a second person before it comes back to you; the sequence is on the quality control page. Connections are detailed to the Engineer of Record's design, as described on the connection detailing page. For a wider look at the tradeoffs, see should you outsource steel detailing.