MasterKey: Integrated Steel Design - Overview

The MasterKey: Integrated Steel Design provides an integrated, interactive steel design environment which links to Masterframe to provide a structural steel member design based on the fully analysis results obtained from MasterFrame. Depending upon the options available on the license, the steel member designs can include for a range of steel cross sections, such as open sections (UB, UC, RSJ, IPE, HE, HL, HD, IPN, W, Equal or unequal Angles, Tee sections etc.) or a range of closed sections (CHS, SHS, RHS etc.). Introduced in the 2018 version, the steel design module now also includes for the design of web openings in a range of open sections, with the design fully compliant with SCI P355 and/or the relevant Eurocodes, where applicable.

The Steel Design module provides the member design for British Standard, South African SABS/SANS and Eurocode design to the UK or user input National Annex.

The Steel Design module allows the user to manually size any structural element in a model, or to use automatic design tools such as the design groups or automatic design options within the module to design all members or groups of members automatically. Thus the elements in the Masterframe model itself can be amended or altered within the steel design module without having to revert back to the Masterframe model. Changes to the structural sizes of the elements are then automatically linked back to the Masterframe model. As sections sizes are amended, it may require the model analysis to be re-run, and this can be done directly in the Steel Design module, without the need to go back into Masterframe itself.

Within the MasterKey: Steel Sections module, a number of tools are provided to allow for the managing of the outputs of the section design. This includes options to send the output to a printer, to print as a .pdf document or to export the member designs to a Word document.

The printing options can be accessed either through the Print menu items, or by selecting the print or export icons from the tool strip located below the graphics pane.