What Integration Looks Like in Practice
At its simplest, integration means the fabrication management system receives piece mark data, section sizes, material grades, and quantities directly from the detailing model — without a person re-typing them. At its most advanced, it means production schedules are automatically populated when drawing releases are issued, material purchase orders are generated from the BOM, and shipping manifests are produced from the erection sequence. Each level of integration reduces manual data handling and its associated error rate.
Available Integration Paths
- KISS files — the most widely supported exchange format; consumed by FabSuite, StruMIS, and others
- SDS/2 direct output — SDS/2 has native integration with several fabrication ERP systems
- Tekla EPM (Enterprise Project Management) — Trimble's own production management platform, deeply integrated with Tekla Structures
- CSV or XLSX export — configurable report outputs that can be imported into most shop management systems with manual column mapping
- API / custom integration — for shops with development resources, Tekla's Open API allows custom data pipelines
What the Detailer Needs to Know to Support Integration
Provide your detailer with: the name and version of your fabrication management system, the required data format (KISS version, CSV layout, etc.), a sample import file showing the expected field structure, and the integration contact at your software vendor. Integration setup is typically a one-time configuration — on subsequent projects with the same detailer and same shop system, data exchange becomes routine.
KISS File Integration in Depth
KISS (Keep It Simple Steel) files are ASCII-formatted text files containing member data in a standardized field layout used across the North American fabrication industry. A KISS file from a Tekla model includes piece marks, section sizes, grades, lengths, quantities, surface preparation codes, and fabrication sequence assignments. FabSuite, StruMIS, and Stratus can import KISS data to automatically populate production work orders, material purchase requests, and shipping manifests. The critical setup requirement is confirming which KISS version your shop software accepts — KISS versions 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 have different field layouts and an incorrect version mapping produces import failures or garbled data.
Tekla EPM — The Closest Native Integration
Tekla EPM (Enterprise Project Management), part of Trimble's Connected Construction platform, is the fabrication management system most tightly coupled to Tekla Structures detailing. Because both products share a database architecture, EPM can import a Tekla model's BOM, CNC file release status, and drawing issue status without a conversion step. Production work orders in EPM link directly to drawing and model objects — when a drawing is revised, the EPM work order flagging that member is automatically updated. For shops committed to the Tekla ecosystem, EPM eliminates virtually all manual data transfer between detailing and production management.
Managing Model Revisions Through the Integration
Integration between detailing and fabrication management creates a new responsibility: when a drawing revision changes a member, the corresponding data file update must reach the fabrication management system before the revised member goes back into production. A revised KISS export or a Tekla EPM model sync must be issued with the same urgency as the revised drawing PDF. Shops that have experienced integration failures — where a member was re-fabricated to the original specification because the production system still showed old data — know that the data pipeline is only as reliable as the revision management process that feeds it.
Validating Integration Outputs Before Production
The first time a detailer and fabricator set up a data integration for a project, the output should be validated with a test import before any production decisions are made. Import the KISS file or CSV into the fabrication management system and compare the imported data against the Tekla BOM for 10 to 15 members — verifying section size, grade, length, and quantity. Check that the piece mark format used in the import matches what the shop's labeling system expects. A one-hour validation prevents a full project's worth of miscoded work orders, wrong-grade purchase orders, and production sequence errors.