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Reverse Engineering Fabric Building

cjowett

Structural
Joined
Jul 12, 2025
Messages
1
I am looking for someone that could reverse engineer some structural drawings for me.
I bought a fabric shelter from a person off Facebook Market place but it didn't come with engineering diagrams or specs. In order to get a building permit the township is asking for drawings with an engineer's stamp so that they know it meets Ontario building code. Is there an engineer here that could reverse engineer the drawings for me, for a fee obviously and with a lot of support from me getting all the dimensions and details? The original manufacturer seems to have gone out of business so I am unable to get anything from them. Attached is a page from the assembly manual with as much detail as they provide.

TMG Industrial sell a similar building. Theirs uses 2" round 15 gauge tubing and they claim 60 lbs/sq. ft snow load. This one that I have uses 2 5/8" x 1 5/8" oval tubing and is 13 gauge so I am confident it will meet the code. I just need to prove it to the building department.
 

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The ideal solution would be to locate the actual person responsible for designing these in the past.
You could potentially run into a lot of issues, and it may be hard to say until you spend a good chunk of money.
If the original structure was designed for a lower snow load, lower wind load, less-exposed wind loading, designed to an older code or different code or less critical use (say, agriculture), or, simply wasn't designed, it may simply not be possible to certify it for your application.
You gain a fair bit of efficiency in doing repetitive design that is just like the other stuff you've done, so anybody new jumping on that will have more of a challenge working out the details than what the original designers did.
In some types of work, it is not really possible to certify it after the fact, so, for example, if the question comes up of whether welding was done by certified welders, or whether welding processes met the welding codes, etc., those questions may be difficult or impossible to satisfactorily answer. Similarly, if you need mill test reports for the steel or test reports for the fabric. So be absolutely sure of what you will need in order to get the whole thing approved before spending any more money on it.
 

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