Is this cold formed steel building design software?
Short answer. It is design and code-checking software for cold-formed steel buildings, not structural analysis software. It will tell you whether a building belongs on cold-formed steel at all, what the code requires of it, and where the span crosses into red-iron PEMB — deterministically, citing the standard. It will not size a member, run a load combination, or produce anything an engineer can stamp. Those are the engineer's job, and it is built to hand them a brief rather than replace them.
What it decides, and on what basis
Cold-formed steel is checked against IBC / IRC, AISI S100, AISI S240 and AISI S400, with structural loads referenced to ASCE 7-22 / IBC 2024 and energy to the 2021 IECC / ASHRAE 90.1-2019. Adoption is uneven by jurisdiction: the locally adopted code and the county's load values always govern.
| Cold-formed steel | Value |
|---|---|
| Typical clear span | 50 ft |
| Practical maximum clear span | 70 ft |
| Typical eave | 12–20 ft |
| Practical maximum eave | 26 ft |
| Best for | workshops, small warehouses, utility buildings, single-engine hangars |
The one hard code anchor on CFS span: a cold-formed steel truss clear span of 60 ft or greater triggers special inspection and mandatory engineered bracing (IBC 2206 / 1705.2.5, based on AISI S100). Every other figure above is engineering-dependent, and is labelled that way in the data rather than presented as code.
What moves a job off cold-formed onto red-iron PEMB — any one of these, not additive: clear span over 70 ft, eave over 20 ft, ground snow over 40 psf, design wind over 140 mph, clear height over 20 ft, a mezzanine, or a crane bay. Heavy roof equipment, cranes and high snow overstress cold-formed members unless reinforced; wide bays and tall clear heights are outside the system's economic range.
Framing detail it knows
- Stud spacing 16–24 in on centre (AISI S240), aligned to 4x8 ft sheathing — anything else wastes board and complicates every trade that follows.
- Stud thickness 33–118 mil (20 gauge to 10 gauge). Load is answered with thicker steel rather than more studs: CFS carries load through continuous stud spacing, so "how many columns" is the wrong question.
- Mid-rise CFS, typically 4–12 storeys, changes at two storeys: vertical load accumulation and lateral force. Fire rating is 1–2 hours of Type X gypsum per UL assemblies, because steel loses strength with temperature and multi-storey CFS depends on encapsulation.
- Uplift, not gravity, governs anchoring on light-gauge buildings, which can weigh as little as 2–5 psf.
What it will not do
- No member sizing, no load combinations, no analysis model. It is not a replacement for engineering software and does not pretend to be one.
- No stamped drawings. The manufacturer supplies an anchor-bolt plan; the buyer's engineer designs the foundation.
- No guessed site loads. Ground snow and design wind are asked for, not invented, because a wrong load silently produces a confident wrong answer.
- No connection design, no shop drawings, no erection drawings.
Related
- What the configurator generates: the 3D output, in detail
- Try it: machinaebuild.com/app