Hi all,
does anyone what happen to Deca steel? DECAsteel - mind.sight.studios
I think they was developing a steel plugin to work like Tekla. I havnt had any more update via email as i signed up to their mailing list year or so ago.
thanks
Sorry for the silence on DECAsteel. We are hoping to announce some exciting news on this extension very soon, possibly even before the end of the year.
Sign up here (if you haven’t already) to ensure you won’t miss the announcements.
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Today we announced the upcoming release of our first public build Alpha 0.1 planned for January 2025. The alpha will be free and available for everyone. 
Here’s a preview:
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That is very cool!
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how much is the plugin likley to cost?
If anyone wants to try out a pre-alpha version to help us test our installation and license activation process prior to public release, please submit a request here:
https://mindsightstudios.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Thanks!
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DECAsteel Alpha 0.1 is now available - for free!
Looking forward to hearing your feedback!
Documentation and tutorials are coming…starting on this tomorrow 
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Update: We have published some documentation and more is actively being worked on:
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Hi Whaat,
thanks for keeping us in the loop. I appreciate your efforts here and I actually do some steelwork at work etc. May i ask how comes you have gone through all this effort when the market for this maybe small especially when there are things like autodesk advanced steel and Tekla?
Great question Luke! Yes, the market might be too small - I’ll guess we’ll see what happens. It’s been a ton of effort just to get to this point but as a formal structural engineer, I had a dream of creating this extension many years ago and am hoping it can fill a void in the market, that being to provide a low cost solution for structural steel engineers, designers, and detailers.
The other solutions you mention are extremely expensive and perhaps not an option for some smaller companies. Maybe we can develop something that meets the most critical needs without the high price tag.
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Thanks for the reply. I will check out the plugin soon. I havnt had a chance to look at it yet. I know another person who also done a lot of SS work with SU so I will give them a heads up also. 
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Iv had a little play tonight and downloaded the Euro/ UK steels and it seems to work well so far. I will try and test it on a real like scheme soon.
It is very generous of you to allow for a 1 year licence on this (I think i read it was 1 year anyways) . Do you know how much it would be after the 1 year?
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Glad to hear it is working well so far. I’m very curious to hear about how it performs for you in a ‘real-world’ situation.
Regarding price, it is impossible to say now. There is a chance it will be free for multiple years. There are many factors at play. One of the biggest is whether we will see a strong demand for continued development of this product.
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Wow, that’s great to hear! There aren’t many things you can get for free these days. I can tell a lot of effort has gone into this. I’ve had Profile Builder 3 for years, but I’ve never really used it extensively. When I downloaded the UK steel list, I noticed it mentions Profile Builder 4. Are you also the developer of Profile Builder? Apologies if these are silly questions!
I noticed in the Deca promo video there was also nuts and bolts which appeared in the model. How is this added into the models?
See here for how to create bolts that can be used in connections:
You can also create a new Project from an example template. These templates have a few bolts already created and are ready to use for connections.
And yes, we also created Profile Builder
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Is there a way of sending to layout using the DECA plugin in metric? Can only seem to get it sent to Layout dimensioned in imperial.
I assume you are talking about the experimental Shop Drawings feature? If you look into the Standard settings for Shop Drawings, it points to a template file. If you modify this template file or create a new one that is set to use metric units, then you should see that reflected in your Shop Drawings export.
See here for more info on how to customize Shop Drawing export.
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I’ve been working hard on the online documentation for DECAsteel.
I wanted to highlight two articles in particular related to compatibility of DECAsteel with Profile Builder and Quantifier Pro.
Combining these two other extensions with DECAsteel results in a very powerful suite of features for structural / BIM modeling.
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I just down loaded the extension. Although I dont do structural steel much these days (mostly residential) I do have the occasional steel member in a home. I have done a few Barndos that are in Red Iron Buildings. I always have to draw each member from the Mfg. Plans. This extension should be valuable with those projects. I look forward to participating in the development!
I want to say this looks great so far. One thing I found is the grid marker feature can be used in any architectural model. It is an easy way to put a grid label in the model that can be used to locate labels in Layout. Great work as usual!
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I agree, the grid label maker is helpful for any project (could be a useful standalone extension)
@Whaat - my related requests would be:
-would love to see Calibri added to the label font list (to match my LO font)
-the grid stamping sequence is very intuitive and easy with the auto lettering/numbering, but if the sequence gets interrupted you have to revert to using the native copy tool. It would be awesome to be able to restart the stamping sequence if you want to come back and add more grids.
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