Abstract: It's hard to express the spatial structure in the 2-D design of steel structure of a heating furnace because of the complex projective relationships. A new way is proposed taking the 3-D technology as a core to redevelop the Solid Edge with Visual Basic, based on the ActiveX automation technology. Drawing a layout diagram as frame then filling the materials is used as design mode. The steel structure is divided into several sub-systems according to the concept of modularization. With the bottom-up pattern in design, every member is designed independently first then assembled together with each other to develop an interactive drawing software which has friendly user interface and is easy to use. In this way a 3-D parametric design system is implemented in Solid Edge environment, thus improving the design efficiency and quality. A design of engineering drawing is given as example to verify the feasibility and applicability of the method proposed.