As a focus in teaching design for engineering courses， creation of engineering situation is critical for developing students’ engineering awareness and for cultivation of their abilities in engineering application. To solve the problems of non-vivid， incomplete and nonsystematic engineering situation creation in teaching structural design courses to civil engineering majors， creation of integral engineering situation was introduced by using structural arrangement， selection of calculation unit， load calculation， internal force calculation， and internal force combination as examples. The practical results show that the integral engineering situation has advantages of vivid， visual and systematic representations， which are helpful for students to have a better mastery of relevant concepts， basic principles and calculation methods， contributing to their understanding of the composition and transmission relationships between the whole structural system and the individual structural system. The creation of integral engineering situation is a positive exploration in the current teaching of structural design courses， which is helpful to development of students’ skills in structural design and of their holistic views on structures.