Parabuild foresees a range of commands allowing you to quickly draw the base structure of the project. This wireframe is then used to place the profiles on.

Parabuild has an extensive profile library. It's possible to draw any kind of section (2D) and to save this section. Afterwards, this section can be used to draw a 3D profile and then perform any kind of manipulation on that profile.

A Profile with a variable section over its path is also possible to draw in Parabuild. An example of this is a roof beam of which the web gradually becomes bigger over the length of the beam.
At the moment sections of the following regions were added to the Parabuild section library: USA, Europe, South-Africa, ...

Parabuild is a software package with which everything is drawn in detail. Sometimes this is not exactly what we want, but there is a solution for this problem: structures.
Imagine you have to draw a tread. You could do this by drawing several plates. As a result you would get these plates in the bill of materials. We don’t want the plates but only the tread name in the Bill of materials. This problem is easily solved with Parabuild. With a few mouseclicks we make the tread as one structure, the name you give to this structure will display in the bill of materials. This structure can be saved in the elements library for later use.
(The tread is simply an example, there are alot more possible applications for structures. The standard Staco treads are already available in the Parabuild elements library for our clients to use).

These are basic AutoCAD instructions that also work on Parabuild objects: you can easily stretch and mirror profiles, plates and bolts with the AutoCAD commands.
Stretching goes even further by not only allowing to lengthen or shorten a profile or plate, it also allows you to move or stretch cutting patterns, move holes and modify the axis (or path) of a curved profile.

Besides the many graphical manipulations, you can modify the properties of elements in an efficient manner. The properties are adaptable with the AutoCAD properties dialog box, which allows for many possibilities: We can change the properties of multiple elements in one operation, for example changing all IPE200 beams to IPE300.
The user has the option to create properties of his own. These custom properties can be displayed in the automatically generated Bills of Materials and workshopdrawings.

With a click on a button you let the software check your complete project for collisions. All parts of the project are checked against one another to determine if they collide or not. Colliding parts can cause trouble when welding or erecting the structure. In particular when drawing complicated structures with many connections, this is a feature with great value.
Parabuild can also determine if there is enough room around a bolt, or if a hole is drilled too close to the edge.

Before getting output, the project will be numbered. This means that each unique element get its own number – and all identical elements get the same number. The format of these numbers can be adjusted. This numbering system is ofcourse completely automatic.
Parabuild can create a lot of different bill of materials for you. You can assemble your own bill of materials by adding/removing the columns, the column order and the sorting of the elements.
You can save the resulting bill of materials as ASCI text files, or send it directly to Microsoft Excel. In Excel you can adapt the layout of the Bill the way you want it.
Some of the BOM possibilities are:

• - Profile ordering list
• - Plates ordering list
• - Bolts list
• - Profile Cutting list (with or without images, see illustration!)
• - Position and mark list (a position number is the number of a part for example a plate, a mark number is the number of a group of welded parts)

The countless settings of the workshopdrawings allow you – but do not oblige you – to adapt the drawings to look the way you want them.
The automatic dimension routines can handle oblique dimensions. Our intelligent search system searches for the best place to put a dimension so that it interferes with as little as possible other lines.
Generating nc-files for cnc machines is included. Parabuild creates nc-files in the widely used DSTV standard, which allows for automatic drilling and/or cutting of profiles and plates.