If you fabricate steel anywhere from Rotterdam to Bucharest, you need takeoff software that reads IPE 300, HEA 200, and UPE 180 off a drawing without you translating anything first. SteelFlo detects EN-standard section callouts directly from PDF drawings — 1,112 European sections backed by ArcelorMittal catalogue data — identifies the standard automatically, and outputs kg/m and tonnes, not pounds and feet. You upload the set, review the AI's detections box by box, and export a metric bill of materials.
That's the short version. Below: exactly which section families are in the database, how mixed EN/UK/US drawing sets are handled, and what it costs against the tools European shops usually evaluate.
Which EN Sections Does the Database Cover?
Most takeoff tools on the market were built for American drawings and carry AISC tables only. Show them HEB 240 and they either skip it or misparse it — and a skipped column in a tender is money out of your pocket either way.
SteelFlo's EN database carries 1,112 sections across every family a European detailer will call out, verified against ArcelorMittal's published catalogue (V2024-1):
| Family | Sections | What it is | Range in database |
|---|---|---|---|
| IPE (incl. IPE A/AA/O) | 72 | Standard I-beams | IPE AA 80 (4.9 kg/m) to IPE 750 x 220 (220 kg/m) |
| HE (HEA, HEB, HEM, HE AA, HE C) | 124 | Wide-flange columns/beams | HE 100 series up to HE 1000 x 584 (584 kg/m) |
| HL | 35 | Extra-wide heavy beams | Up to HL 920 x 1377 (1,377 kg/m) |
| HD | 42 | Heavy column sections | HD 260 x 54,1 to HD 400 x 1299 |
| HP | 58 | Bearing piles | Full ArcelorMittal pile range |
| UPE | 14 | Parallel-flange channels | UPE 80 (7.9 kg/m) to UPE 400 (72.2 kg/m) |
| UPN | 18 | Tapered-flange channels (DIN heritage) | UPN 50 (5.6 kg/m) to UPN 400 (71.8 kg/m) |
| L (equal/unequal angles) | 129 | Angles | Standard European rolled range |
| UB/UC/UBP/PFC (British series) | 327 | Rolled in Europe for UK-spec jobs | Full ranges |
| W (American series) | 289 | Rolled in Europe for US-spec jobs | Full W range |
Two things worth noting in that table. First, the HE family is fully split: HEA 200, HEB 200, and HEM 200 are three different sections (42.3, 61.3, and 103 kg/m respectively — a 2.4x weight spread on the same nominal size), and the software resolves each variant to its own mass. If you've ever seen an estimate where someone priced HEB tonnage off HEA weights, you know why that matters. We cover the differences in detail in HEA vs HEB vs HEM.
Second, the British and American series are in the EN database on purpose. ArcelorMittal rolls UBs and W-shapes in Differdange and Esch; European fabricators win jobs specified in all three. More on mixed sets below.
For a plain-language walkthrough of the European families themselves, see the European steel sections guide.
How Does Automatic Standard Detection Work on European Drawings?
You don't tell SteelFlo the drawing is European. You upload the PDF, and the software reads the section callouts across every page, recognises that IPE 240, HEB 300, and UPE 200 are EN-standard designations, and loads the EN section tables automatically. Every detection gets a bounding box drawn on the drawing at the exact spot the label appears.
The counting rule is deliberately dumb, in the good way: the count is the number of boxes. Seven boxes labelled IPE 300 means seven pieces. There's no "typical of 4" inference, no hidden multiplication. If a label isn't boxed, it isn't in your BOM — which means when you review the takeoff, you're checking things you can actually see, not auditing invisible logic.
That review step is the point, not an apology. AI detection plus your verification is what produces the 95-99% accuracy — the software finds the labels, you confirm or reject each one on screen, and nothing exports until you've had eyes on it. On a typical multi-page European set, that review takes minutes, versus the hours of highlighter-and-count it replaces.
This works the same whether your drawings come out of Tekla, Allplan, or a scanned set from 2009. Text-based PDFs and raster/scanned pages are both handled.
Metric In, Metric Out: kg/m and Tonnes Throughout
This sounds trivial until you've fought a US-built tool over it. Plenty of software will grudgingly accept a metric drawing and then hand you a BOM in lb/ft that you convert in a spreadsheet — one more manual step, one more place to fat-finger a factor.
SteelFlo's workflow for an EN set is metric end to end:
| Step | Unit |
|---|---|
| Section weight lookup | kg/m from catalogue tables |
| Lengths on drawing | metres |
| Line-item weight | kg |
| BOM total | tonnes |
| Pricing (if you use it) | €/tonne or your currency per tonne |
A worked example: your takeoff finds 14 boxes of IPE 300 at 8.4 m average. That's 14 × 8.4 m × 42.2 kg/m = 4,963 kg, call it 4.96 t on the BOM line. At €1,150/t supplied, that line is €5,708 before fabrication. Every number in that chain came off the drawing and the catalogue — nowhere did anyone convert through pounds. For per-size mass reference data you can sanity-check against, see the IPE beam weight chart.
What About Mixed Sets — EN Plus UK or US Sections?
Real European work is rarely pure-EN. Common cases:
- A German industrial client's set with
HEBcolumns and a mezzanine detailed inUBsections by a UK consultant. - A data centre or automotive plant built to a US parent company's spec:
W12X26beams on European soil. - A Benelux job mixing
IPEfloor beams withUPNchannels carried over from an old DIN-era detail library.
SteelFlo detects the standard per drawing set and recognises callouts from six standards families — AISC, BS/IS, EN, AS/NZS, GB, and CFS/SSMA, over 4,500 sections total — so a W12X26 on page 4 of an otherwise-EN set still gets found, boxed, and weighted correctly (converted into your metric BOM). You don't pre-select a region and you don't lose the odd foreign section to a parser that only speaks one dialect. Why single-standard tools structurally can't do this is covered in why a steel takeoff tool needs multiple standards.
What Does It Cost for a European Shop?
| SteelFlo | Typical takeoff suites | Takeoff-as-a-service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| EN section database | 1,112 sections built in | Usually AISC-only; EN via manual custom entries | Depends on the human doing it |
| Trial | 3 free takeoffs, full pipeline | Timed trial or demo-gated | Per-project quotes |
| Price | $399/month, flat | Per-seat licences, often annual contracts | Per-drawing fees that scale with volume |
| Turnaround | Minutes per set, in-house | Your estimator's hours | Days, external |
The 3 free takeoffs are real takeoffs — upload your own EN drawing set, run detection, review, and export the BOM. That's the honest way to evaluate this category: not a canned demo drawing, but the messy set currently sitting in your tender folder. A broader feature rundown lives on the steel takeoff software page.
Do My Drawings Need to Be in English?
No. Section detection keys on the designations themselves — IPE 300 is IPE 300 whether the surrounding notes are in German, French, Dutch, Polish, or Italian. Title blocks, general notes, and material specs in any European language don't interfere with finding and boxing the steel callouts. The review interface is in English, but the labels you're reviewing are your drawing's own labels.
Are Legacy DIN Sections Like IPB and INP Recognised?
The DIN-heritage sections that survived into current European rolling are covered: UPN channels (the old DIN 1026 tapered-flange profile) are in the database at all 18 sizes, and the HE family is the direct successor to DIN 1025's IPB series (IPB = HEB, IPBl = HEA, IPBv = HEM). If an older drawing calls out IPB 240, treat it as HEB 240 — same section, 83.2 kg/m. Genuinely obsolete profiles like INP I-beams that no longer appear in mill programmes aren't in the standard database, but on the drawings European shops bid today, they're rare; when one appears, you add it as a manual line item during review.
What Export Formats Are Available?
Three outputs from every takeoff: a cut list (the BOM itself — every section, count, length, and weight in kg and tonnes, as CSV for your spreadsheet or ERP), an order sheet (lengths nested onto stock bars so you order mill lengths, not theoretical metres), and a priced estimate if you want SteelFlo to carry the numbers through to a cost. You can also export the drawing PDF with the detection boxes drawn on it — useful for handing a marked-up set to whoever checks your tender.
If your shop bids EN-standard work, the fastest way to judge any of this is with your own drawings. Upload an EN drawing set — 3 free takeoffs, no card required — and see what the detection finds on the exact set you're pricing this week.