Steel Estimating Explained: Why It’s Still Manual and How AI Helps
Among the latest innovations in steel construction digitalization is SDS2's virtual load planning tools, originally launched as a standalone product. It offers a virtual load planner that has proven to enhance workplace safety, optimize loading and handling, and shorten project completion times, bringing a new competitive advantage to fabricators and detailers.
Enhance workplace safety
A company’s people are its most valuable assets. Virtual load planning helps businesses keep them safe by allowing users to create and refine their entire loading plans in a safe virtual environment before any members are placed on the trailer. While the standard load lists often leave room for guesswork and trial-and-error loading processes, SDS2 provides a clear and comprehensive loading plan that eliminates unnecessary handling and subsequently reduces the risk of accidents in the shop.
Optimize loading and minimize material handling
3D BIM software has proven to increase accuracy, efficiency, and reliability in steel fabrication; it only makes sense that a 3D model-based load planner can do the same for the truck loading process.
In SDS2, users can create optimized loading plans directly from their IFC models for a seamless, accurate workflow from fabrication to transport.
With automated and manual control options, users can virtually place and manipulate members on the truck, correcting mistakes before they happen. As load plans are created, SDS2 automatically calculates weights and balances and analyzes center of gravity. While traditional load lists provide only weights, SDS2 also considers geometry, ensuring tighter fits and potentially reducing the number of loads that get shipped out.
Teams equipped with these optimized, easy-to-follow loading plans have reduced their material handling—most fabricators’ number one cost—by up to 50 percent.
Accelerate project timelines
Saving time on loading and offloading leads to a shorter overall timeline for project completion, and there’s no question that manipulating members in a virtual environment is faster than doing so in the shop. But that’s only the beginning of the time-saving possibilities users are finding with SDS2's virtual load planning.
Knowing the loading plan ahead of time, users can reverse engineer the entire fabrication process with loading and offloading efficiency in mind, which creates opportunities to optimize timelines throughout the entire project.
Interested in adopting load planning for your fab shop?
