The five systems
| System | Where it fits |
|---|---|
| Post frame | Shops, ag buildings, barndominiums. The volume product for a lot of builders. |
| Red iron, bolt-up | Engineered steel frames, fabricated in a shop and bolted together on site. |
| Red iron, weld-up | Steel frames built from steel shapes and welded together. |
| Stick frame | Residential work and interior framing inside a shell. |
| Hybrid post frame | Wood posts with steel trusses. |
| Tube frame / carports | Carports, RV covers and light open structures. |
That's five framing systems. Red iron gets two rows because bolt-up and weld-up go together differently, and a dealer who sells red iron usually gets asked about both.
Why red iron needs both
Bolt-up and weld-up are both red iron, but they're built differently, ordered differently and priced differently. A tool that only does one of them sends some of your red iron customers back to a pencil and a spreadsheet. What actually differs between the two.
What one tool per system costs
When each framing system lives in its own tool, every tool is its own license, its own setup and its own price list to keep current. Your people learn each one separately. New hires learn all of them, plus which one to use when.
The quiet cost is pricing drift. Material costs move, you update one tool, and a few weeks later someone quotes off stale numbers in the other one. Nobody notices until the margin is gone. More on what separate tools cost.
Comparing systems on the same building
Some customers are on the fence. A wide span might make sense in post frame or red iron, and the customer deserves to see both. With separate tools, that means designing the building twice, in two interfaces, and reconciling two takeoffs by hand. A lot of people don't bother, so the customer gets whichever system the salesperson happened to reach for.
With every system in one place, the comparison is part of the conversation instead of a weekend project. Where post frame and red iron each make sense.
Same tool, same output
One tool also means one kind of output. The material list, dimensioned elevations, sheet layouts and post layouts look the same whatever the framing system. Your office reads one format. Your crew reads one format. Pricing comes from your supplier price sheet once it's loaded, in the same place for every system.
And it means the same tool everywhere you work. The dealer configurator runs in a phone's browser with nothing to install, so the system the customer asks about in the driveway is the one you can design right there. What designing from a phone looks like.
One plan
Redline is the only one giving five framing systems, with red iron in both bolt-up and weld-up, for the price of one plan. That plan is $250/mo with 2 seats included and $0 setup. The plan that adds the Website 3D Designer on your own site is $290/mo, and you pick which systems your customers see there. See pricing.
On your website, that means a customer who wants a carport and a customer who wants a shop can both design what they want, and both quote requests land in your dashboard with the full design. Why that beats a contact form.
Who this matters to
If you only ever sell post frame, coverage matters less. But plenty of builders who've been at it a while have quoted a carport for a customer who came in asking about a shop, or passed on a red iron job because their tool couldn't handle it. Every system your software can't design is a job you either price by hand or send somewhere else. Neither one helps you close.
Suppliers feel it too. A supplier who carries post frame and steel wants dealers quoting both from the same catalog, in the same format. More on that from the supplier side.
Questions to ask any tool
- Which framing systems does it actually model, not just render?
- Does red iron mean bolt-up, weld-up, or both?
- Is each system an extra license or part of the plan?
- Is there one price list or one per system?
- Can your customers pick a system on your website?
Then use the 10-day free trial to design a building in each system you sell and see what comes out.