Design Briefs.

A design brief is the name given to a design appended to a particular member within the Steel Design module. A design brief is made up of a series of design checks carried out on the member it is attached to. The design brief controls the type of design checks that are carried out within the design brief.

Within the Steel Design Module, a range of design briefs are provided. These Integrated Design Briefs are accessed through the Integrated Design menu within the MasterKey Steel top menu structure. The available design briefs are given a title which acts as a descriptor and so gives a description of the type of design checks that will be carried out in that type of design brief. Some design briefs will give a summary information, some briefs are applicable to all types of steel members and some briefs are intended only for use on certain types of steel member.

The following section gives a description of each of the available design briefs and the types of design checks available within each brief, as well as an overview of the use of each type of design brief.

Design briefs can be added through the MasterKey Steel module interface. Design briefs can also be added automatically to members by using the Steel and Composite Member Design Groups (Pro) functionality, accessed in Masterframe through the Design menu. This provides another method of adding design briefs to individual members, but also allows the user to group members for design purposes, to allow groups of members to be designed using the same design data and also to opt to assign a common section size to particular groupings of members. Whether design briefs are added to members individually in the MasterKey Steel module, or through the MasterFrame Design Groups, the design checks and options available for a type of brief are unchanged and the navigation and use of the briefs is unmodified. For further details on the use of Design Groups within MasterFrame, refer to the MasterFrame manual.

On entering the MasterKey: Steel module, the module will open on the brief 1. If no briefs have been created automatically or added, the left hand side pane will be blank. The screen layout is shown below, for a sample Beam and Beam-Portion brief attached to a secondary beam.

In the main graphics window, when the 3D view is not active, the members of a model are colour coded. Members which are shown in cyan have no steel design brief attached to them. This may be because a brief has not been added, or because the member is not a steel section i.e the member is either concrete, timber or a composite section. Note that, even though a composite beam is a steel beam, composite beams are to be designed in the Composite Beam module. Any members which have a steel design brief attached will show in black. The currently selected member will be shown in 3D and will show in red. In the above model, only 3 members currently have a steel design brief attached, with the current member having a Beam and Beam-Portion brief appended to it.