What Is a Steel Fabrication Package? Files Explained

What Is a Fabrication Package, and What Can Software Do With It?A plain-language tour of the files inside a structural steel fabrication package (drawings, KISS, DSTV/NC1, IFC) and how FabTrk turns them into a working project.If you run a structural steel shop, you already handle fabrication packages every week. The detailer sends over a folder, somebody prints the drawings, and the job starts moving. But that folder contains far more than paper. Most of it is structured data that software can read directly, and that changes what "starting a job" can look like. Here is what a typical package contains, and what each piece is actually for. The drawings Erection drawings, assembly drawings, and single part drawings are still the backbone of the job. They tell the shop what to build, how pieces fit together, and what the field crew needs to erect. In most shops these arrive as PDFs. They are meant for human eyes, which is both their strength and their limit: a PDF tells your fitter everything, but it tells your software almost nothing on its own. KISS files KISS (Keep It Simple Steel) is a plain text exchange format that detailing systems like SDS/2 and Tekla export. A KISS file is essentially the bill of materials for the job in machine readable form: every piece mark, its quantity, its section profile, its length, its grade, and how parts roll up into assemblies. This is the file that answers questions like "how many tons is this job" and "how many W12x26 pieces do we cut" without anyone keying data into a spreadsheet. If your detailer can export KISS, the parts list for the whole project already exists as data. DSTV / NC1 files DSTV files (usually with a .nc1 extension) describe individual parts at the machine level: the profile, the length, and every hole, cope, and cut on the piece. CNC beam lines, drill lines, and plasma tables consume these files directly. For a management system, DSTV files are a second source of truth about each part. They confirm the geometry the KISS file summarized, one piece at a time. IFC models IFC is the open standard for exchanging 3D building models. When the detailer exports an IFC file, you get the full structure in three dimensions: every member in its real position, with its piece mark attached. It is the same model the detailer worked in, minus the proprietary format. Shops without model access end up mentally reconstructing the building from 2D sheets. With the IFC in hand, anyone can spin the structure around and see where a piece lives before it hits the fit up table. What ingest actually means Most shop software treats these files as attachments. You upload them, and they sit there. Someone still types in the parts list, builds the task list, and files the drawings by hand. That manual step is where transcription errors creep in and where "going digital" quietly turns into double entry. FabTrk takes the other approach: it ingests the package. Drop in the drawings, the KISS file, the DSTV/NC1 files, and the IFC model, and it reads them to build the project for you. Concretely, that means: A task list. The work to fabricate the job is laid out so assignments can start immediately, and the project moves through its stages from Detailing to Shop to Shipping. A parts ledger with derived weights. Every piece mark from the package becomes a tracked part, with weights derived from section profiles and lengths, so tonnage totals come from the data, not from a calculator and a late night. A document set. The drawings and files are organized against the project, so the sheet for a given assembly is findable from the shop floor instead of living in a binder. An interactive 3D model. The IFC becomes a model you can rotate and inspect in a browser or on a phone, tied to the same project as the tasks and parts. The point is not that the software is clever. The point is that the detailer already did this work. The package is the project; it just usually arrives in a form that makes people re enter it. What to ask your detailer for If you are evaluating a move to digital tracking, the practical first step costs nothing: ask your detailer to include KISS and IFC exports alongside the drawings and NC1 files on the next job. Nearly every modern detailing platform can produce them. Once those files are part of your standard deliverable, the setup cost of a digital system drops to roughly the time it takes to upload a folder. If you want to see what that looks like end to end (package in, project out), see how FabTrk handles it.