Computer Software for Steel Professionals
Structural Material Manager Version 19.1 Upgrade
Production-Control Module Gains New Alternate Piece Mark Scheme: The optional Production-Control Module normally employs a piece mark scheme in which main members are assumed to have major piece marks containing upper-case letters, such as "18B2", without any lower-case letters. Detail items are assumed to have minor piece marks containing lower-case letters, such as "a12." If a mark contains upper-case and lower-case letters, such as "17Ab2", it is considered a detail item.
An alternate scheme has been available for many years. Under that alternate scheme, any item with a piece mark starting with a letter is considered a main member, and any item with a piece mark starting with a number is a detail item. Under this alternate scheme, A1 is a main member whereas 1A1 is a detail item. Upper- and lower-case do not matter under this scheme.
Version 19.1 has introduced another alternate piece mark scheme. Under the new scheme, any item with a piece mark starting with a number is considered a main member, and any item with a piece mark starting with a letter is a detail item. Under this alternate scheme, 1A is a main member whereas A1 is a detail item. As with the original alternate scheme, the concepts of upper- and lower-case do not come into play with the new scheme.
Limiting Text Search to Exact Matches: Searching for text at the Material Entry Screen is now enhanced by an Exact Match option. This prevents extraneous matches due to lines that merely contain the search string rather than representing the precise text for which you are searching. In a general sense, this means that the word eight is not an exact match for the word weight. More specifically relevant to the steel industry, the Exact Match option causes piece mark p32 to not be accidentally found as a match when searching for piece mark p3.
Click here to view a video demonstrating the Exact Match search option.
Automatically Repeating Edits to Items of the Same Piece Mark: Suppose you edit an item of a certain piece mark, and further items of that same mark appear throughout the material list. It is not necessary to painstakingly change each material line! Once you edit any one such item, the system now pops up a dialog asking whether you'd like those changes automatically applied to all other items of that same piece mark.
Click here to view a video demonstrating the feature that allows edits to be automatically repeated.
Significantly More Display Styles: Display Styles allow each user to tailor Structural Material Manager's color scheme and appearance to their own personal tastes and eyesight. This concept debuted under Version 15.3 (circa 2017) with around 60 possibilities. So many new Display Styles have been added to the Version 19.1 upgrade that you now have over 220 from which to choose!
Click here to view a video demonstrating the Display Styles.
System Capacity Increased by 50%: The limit of 50,000 material lines per job has been increased to 75,000. Of course each line can have a quantity greater than (1) meaning that this limit truly is that of lines rather than items.
Fewer Errors Importing Non-Standard Items: Suppose a detailer specifies a certain Miscellaneous Item and uses the Grade field to encode information that should not actually be in that field. For instance, perhaps that Miscellaneous Item is an anchor, and the detailer calls out the Grade as HILTI. During import, such a mistake caused earlier Structural Material Manager systems to stop and report a Grade error. The upgraded system now automatically moves the improper Grade field to the end of the Description and continues with uninterrupted import.
More Stainless Items Added to Size Library: More square/rectangular TSS and HSS items have been added to the Version 19.1 size library. Specifically, the items added were of stainless steel grades.
Upgrade Price Quote and Ordering Info: If you are an existing customer with an older Structural Material Manager version, please e-mail us at Sales@ejeindustries.com to obtain a price quote on the latest upgrade. You can then use the Online Upgrade Order Form to conveniently place the order for the latest Structural Material Manager upgrade.
Other Upgrade Versions: This page specifically covers Version 19.1 upgrade features. For information concerning other upgrade versions, visit our main Structural Material Manager upgrade page which contains links to pages describing improvements in each software release from Version 10.1 (circa 2007) to the present.