Your first model

This is the whole product, once, in order. Follow it end to end on a real drawing set and you'll have a coordinated 3D model and a material takeoff — and you'll have touched every screen in Fablnx along the way.

Allow about an hour for a first pass on one framing plan.

Do this on the worked example first

The guided tutorial seeds an example contract set. If you'd rather practise before committing to your own job, run the tutorial from the help menu (?) and use the set it opens. See What is Fablnx?.

What you'll end up with

Input	One contract drawing PDF
Output	A committed scene, a coordinated 3D model and a CSV takeoff
You'll use	Projects → Files → Copilot → Design spec → Scene editor → Validation → Structure → Model

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Step 1 — Upload the set

1. On the projects screen, click the dashed New project tile — or drag a PDF straight onto it.
2. Pick your contract PDF. Scanned and native-vector PDFs both work.
3. The project opens as soon as the upload finishes.

Two stages start on their own the moment the file lands: Triage reads every sheet and sorts the set, and Lectora reads the general notes into the design spec. You don't start them, and you don't wait for them — carry on.

→ Projects & uploads · The AI copilot

Step 2 — Check how the set was sorted

1. Click the sheet-stack icon in the sidebar's icon strip to open Files. (⌘/Ctrl + B hides and shows the whole sidebar — it does not pick a panel.)
2. Look at the Steel Structures group — these are the sheets you'll build from.
3. Skim Excluded. If a steel sheet landed there, right-click it and choose Mark as Steel structure.

Correcting triage now saves you hunting later. A re-filed sheet is immediately available to build from.

A page with no classification yet can't be re-filed

The Mark as… menu items and the bottom page panel both need a page that triage has already given a row. If a page shows neither, wait for Triage to finish.

→ Files & the page viewer

Step 3 — Read the spec the copilot extracted

1. Open the Design spec panel (the document icon).
2. Read down the sections — Beam steel, Column steel, Joist steel, Clip angle, Plates, Bolts, Welds.
3. Click any value. Fablnx opens the general-notes page it came from and highlights the exact words.

This matters more than it looks. Every member you trace without typing a grade takes its grade from here when you commit — so a wrong value here becomes a wrong value on hundreds of pieces.

→ Design spec

Step 4 — Open a framing plan and outline a region

1. Open a steel sheet from the Files panel.
2. Make sure you are looking at the vector geometry, not the scan — the button on the zoom bar toggles between them. Regions live on the geometry.
3. Right-click empty sheet and choose Create region here. Shape it around the framing plan, then right-click → Save regions.
4. Right-click inside the region and choose Build scene from this region.

Why a region rather than the whole sheet

A sheet often carries three drawings, a schedule and a detail block. A scene is one view — one plan or one elevation — so the region tells Fablnx which part of the paper it is tracing.

→ Files & the page viewer

Step 5 — Create the scene

In the New scene dialog:

1. Give it a name — match the sheet, e.g. S-102 Second Floor Framing.
2. Choose Plan.
3. Choose the Level it cuts, or New level… and type the name and elevation.
4. Leave Foundation plan unticked — on a framing plan the level is the top of steel. Tick it only for a column and base plate plan or a foundation plan, where the level is where the steel starts.
5. Click Create.

Create stays disabled until a plan has both a name and a level.

→ Scenes & the editor

Step 6 — Let detection do the first pass

Run these from the detect group in the tool rail, in this order. Each one unlocks the next.

1. Detect grid lines
2. Calibrate — reads the dimension ticks so distances mean feet
3. Detect columns
4. Detect beams — every stage in one press; the Run tab has a tab per stage. The chevron beside it runs one stage alone, starting with The lineweight beams are drawn at, which shows every weight the sheet uses and lights the one you pick
5. Detect braces and joists — the dashed members between the steel already found
6. Match profiles — asks which members to name: Columns, Beams, Braces, or any mix. One press names them all, because everything that can be named is now on the sheet. The members you leave unticked keep their sections, and their callouts are still read, so a brace's size is never handed to the beam beside it
7. Detect moment connections — the beam ends this sheet draws as fixed. Needs columns and beams both; skip it on a sheet that marks none

If a step is greyed out, its tooltip names what's missing. Nothing runs on its own — you press every one of these.

One press does all six stages

Detect beams runs column to column, curved, member to member, cantilevers, infill and hanging, in the order they feed each other. Infill creates grid lines — infill beams stand on lines the drawing never drew, and they appear on the Offsets layer. Hanging runs last, and its members are stored against the steel they hang from rather than against a line, so they move when that steel moves. Anything still missing goes in with the Beam tool (B); Match profiles names it either way.

What you're looking at

On a plan, detected steel isn't drawn over the sheet — the drawing's own lines change colour. Anything you placed is drawn in the plain style instead. So at a glance you can see which steel came off this drawing and which you brought to it.

→ AI detection & review

Step 7 — Review what it found

1. Click Review detections.
2. Let it auto-play, or step with Prev / Next. The canvas flies to each item.
3. Delete anything that isn't steel — detection deliberately shows you too much rather than too little, so expect a few pieces of detail ink.
4. Press Esc to leave.

Then fill the gaps by hand. The classic miss is a beam framing into the middle of a girder — it has no grid crossing at its far end, so detection can't anchor it. The exception is a run of evenly spaced infill: detection divides the bay between the two girders that bound it and works out where each one stands, even though the drawing never dimensions them. Draw the rest yourself.

→ Tracing a plan

Step 8 — Push, and read what stops you

1. Click Push to Tekla in the head bar. It checks the sheet as part of pushing.
2. If it is refused, read the findings. Each one names what's wrong and where.
3. Click a finding in the RFIs panel to jump to it on the drawing.
4. Fix, and push again.

There is no dismiss, no override and no severity — a question is either answered or it isn't. A refusal is not an error: it means the drawing has questions outstanding, which is the ordinary case.

Taking it one stage at a time (the chevron beside Push) narrows what can stop you: pushing the grid needs the grid to be right, and nothing else.

What it's actually checking

First, the sheet against itself: does every grid line have a name, can every line be located by a chain of dimensions, is the scene calibrated, does every member sit on a real intersection and have a profile.

Only when that is completely silent does it check the sheet against every committed scene — dimension conflicts, disconnected grids, clashes. So fix your own sheet first; cross-sheet findings appear afterwards.

→ Validation & the world · RFIs

Step 9 — Push to Tekla

Click Push to Tekla. The server re-checks the sheet, fills any missing grades from the general notes, and writes the building into the open Tekla model.

Editing a sheet does not take it back out

Every sheet you have traced is part of the building. Change something and it is still part of it — the model is simply behind until you push again.

Step 10 — Add the elevation that gives columns their height

A plan can't say how tall a column is — it's a horizontal cut, so it only reports the section it sees at that one point. The model will tell you as much: it appears on only one plan, so nothing says how tall it is.

The elevation is the sheet that answers it:

1. Create a second scene, this time Elevation.
2. Draw the verticals with the Grid tool and name them from their bubbles.
3. Draw the horizontals with the Level line tool (L). Click a horizontal rule and the Which level is this line? chooser opens — pick the level it is, or New level… to add one. If the rule carries a TOS EL … text matching a level you already have, the chooser is skipped and it pins in one click.
4. Calibrate off the dimension string.
5. Name the grids this frame stands on. Press V for Select and click empty space so nothing is selected. In the inspector, open Runs along and click the grid labels. Without at least one, Push to Tekla stays refused.
6. Fill from the model to pull in what your committed plan already knows.
7. Place the remaining members, dragging each column from its base to its top.
8. Give every member a section — click the W14X90 written beside it on the sheet, or type it into the inspector's Profile box.
9. Push, and clear whatever it asks about.

→ Tracing an elevation

Step 11 — Look at the building

1. Open the Structure panel.
2. Check World — the counts, and anything listed as unplaced with its reason. Treat that list as a to-do.
3. Click Levels and Grids to see the building as a section and as a plan.
4. Click Model to open the coordinated 3D view.

In the model: orbit with left-drag, pan with middle-drag, use Color members by to shade the model by grade or level, and select a member to read its properties.

The 3D model is read-only

Its status bar advertises move, delete and undo. They don't do anything. Edit members in their source scene, then revalidate and commit.

→ Levels, grids & the building · The coordinated 3D model

Step 12 — Take it off

1. In the model ribbon, click Report for the material takeoff.
2. Read the totals, then Export CSV.

→ Material takeoff & export

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The loop from here

That's one full pass. Real work is the same loop, repeated:

trace a sheet → validate → commit → see it in the model → find what's missing → trace the next sheet

Each committed sheet makes the next one easier, because Prefill from the building carries forward everything the model already knows.

If you get stuck

• A greyed-out button always explains itself — and every one of them is listed in Troubleshooting.
• A word you don't recognise is in the Glossary.