Publish to Tekla Structural Designer (Preview)

You can publish or export entire Tekla Structures physical models or selected parts to Tekla Structural Designer using cloud storage or local export files, without both applications needing to be on the same computer.

The cloud workflow also supports revision handling. Steel and concrete models with columns, beams, braces, walls, and slabs can be transferred to Tekla Structural Designer. Profiles and material grades are mapped automatically, and design characteristics are set in Tekla Structural Designer for immediate use.

Tekla Structures 2026 introduces the Publish to Tekla Structural Designer functionality as a Preview feature. To find out more, see Preview features in Tekla Structures.

Publish a model or model objects to cloud

Open the Tekla Structures model from which you want to publish.
Go to the File menu and click Export > Publish to Tekla Structural Designer.

The Publish to Tekla Structural Designer dialog appears.
In Selection, select whether you want to publish all or selected objects of the model.

To publish selected objects (parts and grids), select them in the model.
Define the cloud publishing settings.
1. In Model data storage location, select the location for the model data storage.
  
  There are four model data storage locations available: North America (Virginia/East US), Australia (New South Wales/Australia East), Asia (Singapore/Southeast Asia), and Europe (Ireland/North Europe). The locations are the same locations as in Tekla Model Sharing and Trimble Connect.
  
  Select the region closest to the majority of the users in the model to improve the performance.
2. Model name (mandatory for new models, list of existing models you have write access to)
3. Model description (optional, can only be edited when you create the cloud model)
4. Revision (mandatory)
5. Revision description (optional)
To share the model with appropriate users and to define the access rights for the model, click Share.

In the Manage access rights for cloud model dialog, enter the email addresses of the users you want to give Read, Write, or Admin access to the model, and then click Add users. Separate the email addresses with spaces, commas, or semicolons. When you have added all relevant users and permissions, click Save changes.
To view, delete, or otherwise manage the models in the cloud, click Cloud models.

In the Cloud models dialog, you can list the models by their storage location. Select a model on a list to view its details (such as creation date and description), to manage its access rights, or to delete it. The different revisions of the model are also listed under the model name.
When you have defined the settings and access rights, click Export to cloud and publish to Tekla Structural Designer.

You will see a message saying Export completed successfully when the model has been published and is available in the cloud.

The cloud model can then be opened using Tekla Structural Designer. In the Import Models side pane in Tekla Structural Designer, click Import. In the Import Model dialog, set Source to Cloud, and then select the cloud model and revision that you want to import. For more information, see the Tekla Structural Designer documentation.

Export a model or model objects to a file

Open the Tekla Structures model from which you want to export.
Go to the File menu and click Export > Publish to Tekla Structural Designer.

The Publish to Tekla Structural Designer dialog appears.
In Selection, select whether you want to export all or selected objects of the model.

To export selected objects (parts and grids), select them in the model.
Define the following local export settings:
1. File name
2. Revision
3. Folder
When you have defined the settings, click Export to local file.

You will see a message saying Export completed successfully when the export file has been created.

The exported file can then be used to import the model to Tekla Structural Designer. In the Import Models side pane in Tekla Structural Designer, click Import. In the Import Model dialog, set Source to Local file, and then select the exported file that you want to import. For more information, see the Tekla Structural Designer documentation.