Steel Design uses the concept of Design Constraints to describe any design requirements that are not dependent upon the design actions and can be tested independently of the load cases. Design Constraints include constraints that may be imposed by the designer upon the dimensions of a member as well as any constraints that may be imposed by various design checks. (i.e. a slenderness check that may be required as part of a bending design).

Design Constraints are applied when Designing and Checking a member. The calculations associated with Design Constraints are output to the design report. These calculations are performed at the start of the design before considering the design checks for each load case.  When using Brief Reporting, the calculations for failed design constraints are output to the report. With detailed or full reporting, the calculations for all Design Constraints are shown in the report.

The status of Design Constraints which were tested when Designing or Checking a member are displayed in the "Constraints" column in the Design Efficiency table. If no constraints were checked for a particular member, a dash is shown is this column. Otherwise, this column displays the number of Design Constraints that were not satisfied as part of the design checks.