Designing a product is one thing, fabricating that product is a whole other thing that requires taking an initial product design through an important step called fabrication design. When it comes to the product development cycle, it all starts with an idea. The idea leads to product design, and then engineering, prototyping, and, finally, fabrication. In other words, there’s quite a number of tasks to be completed between product design and fabrication. In short, just because a product has been designed, doesn’t necessarily mean that it can be manufactured in its current state. This is especially true for custom fabricated steel products, which often go from the design step along to a fabrication design step prior to the product moving on to the other stages of the project. During the fabrication design stage, the designer and fabricator have to work together to make any necessary alterations to the product in order to address any conflicts between the initial design and the fabrication process that’ll be used to create the product.