How to use the Project Workspace

Tekla Structural Designer
Modified: 2 Jun 2025
2025
Tekla Structural Designer

How to use the Project Workspace

The Project Workspace is one of the main areas within the software interface where you interact with your structural model. It comprises several tabbed windows, each designed to facilitate specific modeling, design and management operations.

The default Project Workspace windows are as follows:

The Structure window provides a hierarchical tree view of your model's physical elements. From here you can:

  • Navigate and open scene views of different parts of the model.

  • Manage construction levels, frames, and slopes.

  • Control and define grid systems.

  • Review and modify sub-models used in chadsdown analyses

  • Create and design substructures for focused work.

  • View, modify, and design individual structural entities (beams, columns, slabs, walls, etc.).

The Groups window organizes the structural members in your model into design groups. It allows you to:

  • Manage these groups according to your project needs.

  • For concrete members, it further organizes them for detailing purposes.

  • Perform actions on groups like regrouping, adding, setting as default, splitting, renaming, checking, and designing.

The Loading window displays a tree that lists all the individual loads applied to the model within each load case. After analysis, it also shows the sum of applied loads and compares them against the sum of reactions, helping you verify load equilibrium.

The Wind window becomes active after you've completed the wind modeling process. It allows you to:

  • Display wind direction views.

  • Modify wind directions.

  • Modify wind load cases.

The Status window presents a tree that displays validation messages and other indicators related to the model's status, helping you identify and resolve potential issues or warnings.

The Connections window provides a hierarchical organization of the steel connections within your model. It categorizes connections by:

  • Type: Grouping connections based on their structural type and a specific reference.

  • Group: Further refining the grouping by connected member section size.

The Report Index window appears when you display a report view. It contains a tree with bookmarks that enable you to easily navigate through different sections of the generated report.

Tips:
  1. Right clicking on a tree branch in any of the windows displays a context sensitive menu of commands.

  2. If you click X in the top right corner to close a window, you can re-open it from the Windows tab of the ribbon.
  3. By dragging windows to/ from the Project Workspace, it can be reorganized to suit your needs. For more information, see: How to hide, re-display, move, and switch between windows
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