Are Designers Sufficiently Instructed to Make the Most Rewarding Use of the Latest Steel Codes?

Eurocode 3 is going to be very soon substituted for most national codes within Europe. It
introduces new concepts and, especially, a quite innovative approach for the design of structural joints. It shall result in more economical projects provided all these aspects are fully mastered by the practitioners. Presently the latter requisite is still not fully met. Therefore multiple trainings to Eurocode 3 were and are still held. They aim at giving the structural engineers the capability of using the relevant design rules in the most efficient manner. On the base of a personal experience in this field, it is less worth focusing on the latest design formulae than on the overtures offered by the European code. In present paper some main topics are identified and briefly commented on. The lessons drawn in the European context are likely to be more widely profitable.

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