How did you compile your detail library and how do you learn detailing for other unfamiliar sectors? 23

[LockeBT]

Detail library: Was it through previous jobs? From scratch? And more as you went along?

Detailing: Say your niche/specialty is primarily tilt-up. However you want to get your feet wet with wood-framed over podium projects, you are able to perform all the calcs but how do you go about detailing it? I'm sure you know the basics but that's not enough.

 

[skeletron]

Back to the OP:

Detail library: Was it through previous jobs? From scratch? And more as you went along?

Yes. Most details are derived from previous jobs and prescriptive standards. You'll eventually start modifying them to suit: (a) your drawing style; (b) your geographical region's building preference; (c) your engineering judgement.

Detailing: Say your niche/specialty is primarily tilt-up. However you want to get your feet wet with wood-framed over podium projects, you are able to perform all the calcs but how do you go about detailing it? I'm sure you know the basics but that's not enough.

So, this particular instance (tilt-up to wood-frame over podium) is probably a bit of a jump. You would probably want to build your detail library through smaller wood frame projects and smaller concrete slab projects. Do plenty of research and also see if you can review examples in the field. But beyond that, I agree with @phamENG: get a bunch of reviews on your own work and then analyze the comments. There's always going to be better details and more details out there, so it does take time.

As someone who has reviewed a fair bit of drawings from other firms, you probably want to do some backend work on any detail you have. I've seen a couple drawings come through where I can tell that the detail has been copied and it makes me lose confidence in the designer pretty quick. On the other hand, you can see a standard detail (ex: retaining walls) which are presented in a pretty consistent manner across the board, so it's interesting to see where the designer makes it "their own".

 

[structuralCADspecialist]

1) Anyone who claims to have developed their standard details library from scratch (other than the CAD work), is shameless liar.

The firm I worked for had "stolen" all their details from a principal's former employer. Like CTRL-C'd CNTRL-V'd them... didn't even try to hide it.

you want to get your feet wet with wood-framed over podium projects

Some firms have based their details off the connection supplier's catalogue; Simpson Strong Tie for example. Much of the framing requirements come together once you look into the details they provide. One reason they gained so much market share is because they've done a lot of the engineering already. There are other companies including Mitek? that might be used more widely in other areas/countries. For joists and beams, Weyerhaeuser (I always have to look up how to spell that every time I type it!) would give you an idea of where to look for joist details. More and more suppliers are providing engineering in order to make themselves that much more competitive.

Concrete is interesting because the details have actually gotten worse. Firms have transferred their details into Revit (from AutoCAD) and now there is actually information missing. There's lots of bad concrete details floating around out there so be wary. I searched the crap out of textbooks and didn't find much. ACI manuals are a good source but time intensive to pull the actual information you need. Not to mention expensive if you don't already have access to them.

If you want to get "good" details, searching for public sector projects is a good start. I don't intend to hurt any feelings here (I'm a "public sector guy myself) but it seems like firms that work on public projects tend to be a little better than their private sector counterparts. There aren't too many wood framed public projects but they do exist (usually retirement homes). Lots of concrete jobs and it's easy to find good examples, maybe just not in your area; I almost wore the internet looking for good seismic examples from the West Coast but to no avail. Found great examples in non-seismic regions though. Google search including keywords such as "Structural Ground Floor Plan PDF Bid Drawings" or "Second Floor Framing Plan Structural PDF Tender Set"... or mix and match... will eventually yield some results. Public works projects are much more likely to appear because they are, as you'd guess, viewable to the public. I worked as a freelance estimator for a bit which was a great way to see a variety of projects.

 

[OldDawgNewTricks]

As others have said, almost all typical details have been around forever and are handed down from generation to generation. No sense reinventing the wheel if there is something that has already been proven to work well. I was fortunate to start out at a firm that had been in business for a long time and had an extensive library of typical details. Several decades later, I still find myself using a lot of those details with slight modifications to suit my preferences.

Another avenue to collecting details is to do some work in third party code compliance review for jurisdictions that either don't have in-house engineers or have more work than their reviewers can handle by themselves. You get to see all the details that other engineers submit for their permits. You will probably find that most of the typical details are suspiciously similar because they are just recycled from the oldies but goodies.

 

[dold]

The firm I worked for had "stolen" all their details from a principal's former employer. Like CTRL-C'd CNTRL-V'd them... didn't even try to hide it.

A firm I worked for was started by two 'breakaway' employees who were working at the largest firm in town some 20 years back and decided to go out on their own. They brought a CAD guy with them. CAD guy apparently brought the previous employer's entire server.

The two firms are now the two largest firms in the valley. ~$10MM/yr outfits. Competitors, obviously.

If you compare two sets of drawings for a tilt warehouse, for example, - one by company A and one by company B - you can't tell a difference. Save for some formatting and a logo and whatever tweaks to standards have been made over the past 20 years or so. It's remarkable. I suspect the former employer is rather miffed. Honest question - other than feeling guilty about doing so, is there anything legal-wise that would prevent you from doing so? As long as there's no clause in your employment contract I'd assume it's "kosher"? Frowned upon, but kosher?

OP, in regards to 'from scratch' standards for PT, i know that ADAPT (now owned by Nemetschek / RISA - so I don't know if they still offer this service) will provide some very good starting points for typical detailing of PT projects. I.e., they give you .dwg/.rfa files. Not much use for their software if you can't get the design onto the paper, eh? I'd assume you have to purchase their software though.

Similarly, TCA (tiltup concrete assoc.) has a rather large library of CAD details (in .dwg form) available for free (or at least they used to). I'd wager AWC / woodworks provides resources for wood detailing?

As others have mentioned, just start searching for 'multifamily, plans, drawings, structural, (maybe throw in some local firm's names), etc etc etc. Just a bunch of keywords. Also try including "portal" in the search, since most plans are hosted on some AHJ's "plans portal" or whatever. Then there's always the handy FOIA request, if youre really after a specific building that you've had your eye on, for example.

 

[KootK]

This is not a story that I'll enjoy sharing since it shames me but, clearly, this is the spot for it. I was pursued / harassed legally for violating another firm's intellectual property rights last summer. I was absent from this forum for a couple of months around that time and that was, in large measure, the reason why. As an aside, thanks to all of the good people on this forum who reached out to see if I was dead. Frankly, the stress of it all cascaded into some health problems that threatened to, in fact, make me dead. But, alas, I persist, albeit in a modified incarnation.

It went down like this, chronologically:

1) When I was starting out on my own in 2016, I prepared some drawings for a new client. The client reviewed those drawings requested that I use different details in some spots. They sent me PDF copies of the details that they preferred which I recognized as surely being another firm's details. Let's call them Firm B.

2) I was working with contract drafter's all over the globe at that time and would have just sent the details off to one of those guys with the instruction to "make me a version of this that looks like my stuff". In retrospect, what likely happened at that point is this:

a) My drafter used a technique that I was unaware of by which they basically imported the PDF into CAD as a vectorized something or other. The end result has been that my details look ridiculously similar to Firm B's details.
b) Obviously, I failed to back check the details to ensure that my directions had been followed.

3) Last summer, the same client voiced some objections to some of the things that I was proposing on a project located where the environmental conditions were extreme relative to their "normal" projects. I didn't know it at the time but they got a second opinion on my drawings from firm Firm B who noticed that I'd stolen their details.

4) While I was on the road to Oregon to visit my wife's family for the first time in three years, I received a cease and desist letter from Firm B's lawyer. I read this on my phone, called the lawyer to see what it was all about, and then called my client to figure out the best path forward. I told my client that, in addition to the other issues with our active project, I now had to go back and modify the formatting of my drawings to comply with the cease and desist order which would take some time. In the end, we agreed to just have Firm B take over the project with me taking a complete financial loss on it. In my mind, I had "ceased and desisted".

5) We embarked upon the Oregon trip when international COVID restrictions where wildly in flux. We botched it. I got turned back at the Idaho border crossing and had to send my wife and daughter on without me in tears (both are US citizens). I had to hitchhike from Idaho back up to the nearest town with an airport in rural British Columbia. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my laptop in the car with my family and it went to Oregon without me.

6) It took me a solid 72HR to get home from the Idaho border. While I'd thought that I'd "ceased and desisted", apparently the letter that I'd read on my phone instructed me in a post script that they wanted a response in writing within 48 HRS. I failed on that count and, when I finally made it home, found some nasty emails from Firm B in my inbox to the tune of "Hey asshole, stop dodging our lawyer's messages or we'll see you in court! Where did you manage to steal our Revit file from anyhow?". I never had Firm B's digital files but, because my details where such great copies of theirs, I don't think that they believed that. They were clearly trying to get me to admit to stealing their proprietary digital files so that I could be summarily burned at the stake.

Every twitchy fiber of my being wanted to drive down to Firm B's head office and visit some violence upon them. I didn't, though, because:

a) That would not have served my best interests in the long term.
b) I've got some pretty fragile dental work these days.
c) I'm the bad guy in this story, truly.

I basically told Firm B, copying their lawyer that:

d) I reached out to their lawyer within an hour of receiving her letter without even engaging my own council first.
e) I would have been happy to discuss the matter over the phone, or in person, like gentleman, if they'd only contacted me about it prior to lawyering up. But, now that they had lawyered up, I thought it best to keep all of our communications running through their lawyer.
f) I subtly implied that I was starting to feel harassed. I suspect that Firm B's lawyer picked up on that and I heard nothing more directly from Firm B.

7) I called Firm B's lawyer and explained how intellectual property works in our space. I said that I could, and would, modify my work such that it would bear little stylistic resemblance to Firm B's. At the same time, I made it clear that I wasn't going to stop nailing boards to other boards, bolting sill plates to foundation walls, etc. The formatting belonged to Firm B but the technical content was industry public domain as far as I was concerned. I said that I would be happy to sign off on the cease and desist order so long as we shared that understanding. Firm B's lawyer agreed that would be sufficient. My impression was that the lawyer thought that the whole thing was a frivolous posturing effort from the get go.

8) Firm B rejected my acceptance of the cease and desist order and said that they would take me to court unless I told them who I got their digital files from. I said that I wouldn't do that because I didn't have their digital files and, therefore, couldn't do that even if I wanted to.

9) Firm B rejected my acceptance of the cease and desist order a second time and said that they would take me to court unless I told them who I got their PDF files from. I said that I would not do that, as a matter of choice, and would be prepared to thus participate in any court proceedings. This was all pretty odd in that, if I had told Firm B where I'd gotten their stuff from, they would then have had to pursue their own client in order to do something about that.

10) I sent Firm B's lawyer a carefully crafted email subtly conveying:

a) The extremely difficult to disprove story that I would be telling in a courtroom were I forced to find myself in one.
b) That I was considering countersuing for the costs that I had accrued and expected to accrue a as result of what I was beginning to view as Firm B's harassment of me.

That was the end of it. All tolled, I doubt that I spent more than 6HRS working on the issue. Unfortunately, the mental and emotional toll that this took on me was probably closer to 160 HRS. I'm still suffering the fallout from that "dark period". The truth of the matter is that I really was not very concerned about losing the project, losing my client, losing money, or even losing my business. I was concerned about losing my integrity. Like dik, I take my integrity pretty seriously. I feel that I work hard at my craft and that I make a concerted effort to give back to the profession (mostly here). Although I don't feel as though I was guilty of any high crime other than poor quality control, in my heart there's still a nagging voice telling me that I'm now the kind thieving shit that receives cease and desist orders. That was never who I wanted to be when I got started.

I don't mind folks here disagreeing with my ideas. In fact, I relish that. That said, our ideas are avatars for our selves, particularly here where our ideas are really all that we know of one another. To attack the quality of a man's ideas is, indirectly, to attack the quality of the man. It is for that reason that I feel that one should choose their adjectives carefully when challenging another's contributions here. I challenge people's ideas here regularly, probably more than anyone else. But you don't often hear me overtly discounting the value of other people's ideas. That, because:

a) It is never a certainty that I'm correct.
b) I never know all of the details of someone else's story.
c) It is respect and civility that make meaningful discourse viable.

And yes, I do realize that I may be inviting additional legal trouble by sharing this in as much detail as I have. I'll risk it.

 

[LockeBT]

KootK,

Thanks for sharing. I love this thread.

I came for the knowledge but stayed for the wisdom.

 

[Enable]

KootK: You didn't ask for it but I thought I would write a post anyways to let you know that you are not alone in distressing over something disproportionately. I haven't undergone that exact scenario but I have become swallowed (as in totally consumed) by uncertainty on contracts / disputes, which even at the time were known to not possess the potential to totally destroy my business. Yet despite knowing the limit of potential outcomes, it was all I could focus on while it went unresolved and I acted like & felt like I was going to go under. I didn't sleep for months. Mental health is tough and I am glad you did / are working through it. If you ever need a friendly ear, even just to bitch / vent at, please get in touch.

FWIW it's patently clear from your desire to pick things apart the way you do that you care deeply about the profession. It's admirable and a quality few have. As far as I am concerned your integrity is unquestionable, and the story in your post doesn't change that; all it shows is you're human, and shit happens even to the best of us. And by any reasonable mans' judgment: that's okay.

 

[dhengr]

LockeBT:
It seems to me that you would do well to find a bunch of old plan sets, and calcs. if you can, by whatever reasonable means, and study them. Whatever the primary material of construction, look at the plans and details, and study them for their meanings and the intent of what they are showing. When do they change, why, what cause this, what are they trying to convey as the details relate to locations on the plans and elevations? As others have mentioned, most details are not new with every design and set of plans. They are generally long lived, from success in field application, depending upon the type of construction and the materials being used. There are some variations dependent on location/region and the code being followed, but for a given material they are all/each trying the accomplish about the same thing and to deal with the idiosyncrasies of that particular condition. Study literature and design guides from the various material industries, they generally offer some help. Watch out for the old.., “this is the way we’ve always done it,” from the builders.

Try to find a mentor who will help you with this. Not all engineers (mentors) will consider you a competitor, but they may wonder about you going out on your own without knowing how to detail so many things/materials. These people might be bridges that you didn’t burn when you went out on your own, or they might be people you meet through engineering association activities, etc. You might need to be able to offer something in return for the mentor’s efforts, unless they are a long-term friend, with your interests and success on the top of their mind. You go to them periodically, maybe lunch or beer and pizza, with questions on details which you can’t figure out yourself. And, of course, you darn well better show your own effort and enthusiasm, always offering possible solutions, explanations for what the detail is doing, showing that you are really thinking things through.

 

[structuralCADspecialist]

This topic got interesting fast!

A firm I worked for was started by two 'breakaway' employees who were working at the largest firm in town some 20 years back and decided to go out on their own. They brought a CAD guy with them. CAD guy apparently brought the previous employer's entire server.

Similar thing happened in my area. CAD guy basically stopped one step short of taking the server's hard drive with him. Stole (almost) all the CAD standards. Some of it was broken (he must have missed one folder) or he didn't set it up correctly. Instead of fixing things he simply had his drafting team work more slowly with the broken content. I made a brief appearance years later (like maybe an entire decade later) when they were still using the same broken standards. They made very little progress with both their CAD standards and their details until shortly before I quit; at that stage they decided to copy a bunch of details from a drawing set which had been obtained for a 3rd-party peer review. They had also recently hired a Revit technician (I last worked in an office around the time the firms in my area were switching from AutoCAD to Revit). The Revit technician had apparently also done the same thing the AutoCAD guy had done years prior: stealing content from other offices. This guy was next level however: He had worked at several different firms in the area and garnered a reputation as a "content thief". He had either been fired or quit right before getting fired (it's quite hard to get fired at these firms). He managed to make the most out of it I guess and steal everything he could from at least 4 different firms. Revit customization is a little more intensive compared to AutoCAD. Some of the custom programming that this individual had stolen would have taken hundreds of hours to program or cost thousands of dollars to create.

The above firm does not have the best reputation and at the same time they like to talk quite negatively about the same competitors they 'borrowed' from. I'm surprised nobody has called them out. Maybe the reason being that every firm might be guilty of such things. Just not anywhere close to the same magnitude.

I kind of veered off course and starting discussion standards, which isn't quite the same as details. Standards I think should belong to a firm. Details... not so much unless it's actually a patented/proprietary system. But in either case I wonder if any firm can actually claim "ownership" of either. Many years back when Donald Trump had a reality T.V. show he tried to copywrite the phrase "you're fired". Perhaps I can patent the process known as breathing and charge $0.01 per breath?

Given what I've seen with just my limited perspective, it's amazing to hear about what some firms feel worthwhile to chase after. And what they don't.

 

[XR250]

Thanks for sharing, KootK.

 

[KootK]

If you ever need a friendly ear, even just to bitch / vent at, please get in touch.

Thanks for the support. I've long wanted to add you to my network but don't know how to reach you. If you're willing to connect, check out my profile page here and see if you can suss out my burner email address from that.

 

[MacGruber22]

I will say that aside from amassing quality details, Revit has been our favorite way of organizing them. Our firm is much more efficient these days, as well as detailing/designing in a more similar manner between individuals. Our Revit details have "designer notes" and/or hyperlinks to our internal design reference wiki within Microsoft Teams.

I struggled like hell to get this process started, but it is paying off.

KootK - I am sorry to hear your recent struggle.

-Mac

 

[JLNJ]

KootK - thanks for sharing that story.

I find your engineering mind and writing skills top notch. Precious few engineers can do both. Your posts, the long AND the short, are a pleasure to read. I wondered what had "happened" to you, and I'm glad you are back.

Somewhere an attorney sleeps peacefully after spending a week harassing a salt-of-the-earth person for deeds trivial. And collected $20k to do it.

 

[KootK]

Thanks for that JLNJ.

Somewhere an attorney sleeps peacefully after spending a week harassing a salt-of-the-earth person for deeds trivial. And collected $20k to do it.

Yeah, that part is disheartening. That said, in this particular case, I found both the lawyer, and the law, to be among the more reasonable of the voices involved in the conversation.

I'm sure to botch some of what will follow so, please, if anybody knows better, jump in and correct me.

This is what I think that I now know about how intellectual property rights relate to our work:

Copyright

1) Copyright is what applies to the look and feel of a consultant's work.

2) Copyright most decidedly does not apply to the actual ideas expressed in a consultant's work. Rather, it applies to the expression of ideas.

3) For the expression of a consultant's work to be copyrightable, it has to be meaningfully distinctive. An instructive analog is the situation with architecture. Under certain circumstances, an architect can apply a copyright to one of their buildings taken as a whole. They do not, as I understand it, attempt to copyright individual details and stuff like that. That, because there is usually not deemed to be enough creative synthesis happening in the development of architectural details to justify copyrighting them.

Patent

4) Patents are the domain of ideas rather than expression. One might, for example, seek a patent for something like an innovative new kind of building vibration damper.

5) For something to be patentable in most jurisdictions, it must meet two criteria:

a) It must be novel. This is pretty self explanatory and unsurprising.

b) It must be non-obvious. If a thing is detailed as most engineers would detail it, then it is not non-obvious, even if it is novel.

6) Obviously, very little of what a structural engineer does in their detailing would meet both of the criterion just mentioned.

Summary

It's actually pretty tough to bring a successful intellectual property suit against another structural engineer. This probably isn't something that we need to lose much sleep over.

 

[ATSE]

This post is officially ranked top 3 of all time.
The Structural Engineering forum would be materially different and less than, if not for Koot. Respect.

 

[NorthCivil]

Crazy story kootk.

 

[Celt83]

to add onto PhamEng's post from Jan 29th:

Join up with a materials society/council/association a lot of them keep the good stuff behind a pay wall but a few of them have excellent free materials:
CFSEI (Cold Form Steel) - Link
ACI (Concrete - need to be a memeber to access publications and continuing education) - Link
CRSI (Concrete Reinforcement - need to be a member or purchase publications to get the good stuff) - Link
AISC (The commentary in the spec has good info to digest for detailing but you'll want to be a member for archived publication access) - Link
American Wood Council has great free resources - Link
BIA (Brick) has all of their technotes available for free - Link
NCMA (Masonry) has a complete detail library in CAD and PDF available - Link



I'm making a thing:

http://www.thestructuraltoolbox.com

(It's no Kootware and it will probably break but it's alive!)

 

[structuralCADspecialist]

I'm making a thing:

http://www.thestructuraltoolbox.com

(It's no Kootware and it will probably break but it's alive!)

Sold on your logo alone! The website is great too!!