Steel Building Blueprints: They Can Make or Break Your Building Project

Deciphering Your Metal Building Plans is Crucial to Your Project

The pop culture philosopher Yogi Berra once made the statement “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” And when you start a new building project, especially for first time buyers, this stands as one of the Golden Rules of prefab steel building construction. No matter what type of project you’re investing in, the best way to get where you’re going is to have the right kind of map.

What Exactly is a Steel Building Blueprint?

Steel structure drawings can be very difficult to understand at first; for some customers, they often resemble gibberish. But before you start to become overwhelmed, these drawings are actually quite easy to decipher. To put it simply, prefab steel building drawings allow you to understand how every component of a metal structure will be put together and assembled. If you’re not in the metal building industry or if you simply aren’t used to reading these plans, it can feel impossible to get the hang of things! But by learning how to properly read and understand these drawings, you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches.

Steps to Understanding Your Metal Building Drawings

Being able to easily ready and understand the drawings for your metal building isn’t as difficult as you might imagine it to be. And to make sure you’ll know exactly what you’re doing, we’ve listed several steps below to make the process easier. By following these steps, you’ll be able to know exactly what you’re looking at and how your building will be pieced together.

• Getting the Seal of Approval – Before you can start learning how to read the blueprints for your structure, you need to make sure you’re getting the right plans first. Depending on how complex the design of your building is, your company should be supplying you with ten to twenty pages of various plans and focal points for your unit. If something doesn’t look right on the first drawings, be sure to ask questions. Besides, it’s much easier to fix mistakes on paper than it is to order new supplies and start a building project from scratch.
• Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover… Unless it’s Metal Building Plans – The cover page of your prefab steel building plans will have a lot of useful information you’ll need to double check. It will cover all the specifications of your structure and the information required to ensure the project is up to both local and state building codes. Other pieces of information included on the cover page will be how it’s going to be used, your name, the location of the installation and a description of how it will be when complete.
• Shapes and Symbols Reference to Details – These engineered drawings will include several important shapes and symbols that you’ll need to pay attention to. Diamonds, circles, squares and other shapes can be used to reference to certain details about your structure. And while each shape will mean something different, there’s no reason to stress out, they’re very easy to understand!
• Finish Up with a 3D Drawing – With these specific drawings, you can see just how your building will look once it’s installed on your property. At this point during the process, you’ll need to decide if there are any modifications you’ll want to make, such as a new color combination, the placement of your doors and windows and other various features.

We’ve Got You Covered at Get Carports!

For most first-time buyers, this can be a very exciting part of the steel building process. You’ve finally committed! Your plans have been put on paper and are ready to be brought to life. But before you start your next building project, give us a call at (800) 691-5221 and we can help you get the product you need here at Get Carports. We’ll also help you to better understand the drawings you’re given!