Today in our Meridian Tips video blog, we want to show you how easy it is to collaborate with other user’s in the Meridian EDM solution. If you have ever wanted to add comments or markups on technical documents within an EDMS tool, Meridian is your solution.
If your business is interested in unlocking the power of a dedicated EDMS, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the SolidCAD Meridian team.
Autodesk Desktop Connector
Autodesk is spending many resources getting their cloud system tweaked just right. Yet another version of the Desktop Connector has been made available. Read on to find out more.
We present version: v. 15.2.0.1634!
You may download it here: downloaded.
Discover more about it here: Release Notes.
Notable features are:
Starline Windows is an industry leader in the design and manufacturing of architectural aluminum window systems, as well as residential vinyl windows and doors for over 50 years. They have completed thousands of contracts and worked on multiple award-winning buildings across North America.
Their commitment to customer service is and always will be a pillar of their success. With a highly experienced team, they work with their customers on every stage of the project, from initial consultation and design through to installation.
As part of their business, they work with architects to design structural façade glazing features, provide on demand customized manufacturing capabilities in-house, and have a crew to construct and install windows and doors on site.
Today’s push for remote work and custom designs have exposed some logistical difficulties for Starline Windows. To continue providing services in every step of the process, there is a constant need for better tracking and traceability of project commitments, product manufacturing and installation life cycles. Starline Windows faces business challenges that many other businesses face such as (1) lack of design collaboration engagement with external architects and contractors, (2) lack of design revision visibility for field personnel, (3) lack of project cost clarity, (4) limited data transfers between operating systems from the office to the field and (5) lack of cross department visibility in their overall coordination for logistics management.
First and foremost, Starline Windows has always sought to improve granularity and accuracy related to their costing takeoffs. Due to software limitations, they often had to manually manage their takeoffs and Bill of Materials (BOM). This resulted in other departments working with manually generated data reports on a regular basis which are prone to human error.
Starline Windows first connected with SolidCAD in late 2019 to provide insight to the concerns and challenges they have been facing. SolidCAD helped organize a detailed plan that would organize their pain points and provided a solution into four key phases:
PHASE 1: Improving their Product Lifecycle Management
Starline needed a solution that would better manage their projects for employees working in office and provide visibility over the progress of those projects. SolidCAD implemented Fusion Lifecycle Manage PLM to achieve this and set-up automatic notifications to any team members, to ensure they are always staying on track with any project changes.
PHASE 2: Enhance their Design process with Revit and Inventor
Outside of the issues with their workflows, they also struggled with their current 3D design process. Starline was looking to better automate their workflow between their Revit models and how they would be imported into Inventor for further manufacturing design. SolidCAD automated model creation based on their Revit schedule into Inventor, speeding up their entire design process.
PHASE 3: Document Management with Vault
With the seamless connectivity between Revit and Inventor, it was important that all teams were working with latest design files. It was critical to integrate Autodesk’s Vault Professional to ensure that everyone at Starline was working from a central source of organized data. As a result, Starline noticed an immediate improvement in being able to easily manage the revisions that slowed them to automatically tracks changes, maintains past file versions, and capture the entire history of their designs. This also reduced the amount of time and rework that often happened when they worked with outdated files.
Most importantly, Starline wanted a seamless integration between their newly implemented Fusion Manage PLM system and their Autodesk Vault, which SolidCAD was able to achieve through a managed service delivery team.
PHASE 4: Collaboration on field and in office with BIM 360/Autodesk Construction Cloud
Although it was important for SolidCAD to help Starline Windows integrate systems that would better connect their internal departments and processes of design management, they also needed a solution to collaborate with their on-field and in-office employees. SolidCAD introduced Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) and specifically Autodesk Build and integrated it with their PLM solution to manage their Revit models and provide project visibility. Starline Windows was able to easily record, capture and manage the exchange of design data between their project teams and on-field contractors, ensuring that all teams were working from the latest model designs produced in-office.
Over the past year, SolidCAD has successfully implemented these various solutions and continues to support Starline throughout each phase. Although many of these processes do not give instant results, Starline Windows have already seen initial improvements and are on track to many more successes in later stages of their journey, such as:
To learn more about the solutions implemented and the ways that Starline Windows have recognized and overcome some of the biggest challenges facing their industry today, check out the recording from our online event, “The Digital Thread – A Customer Journey” with Catherine Walmsley, Business Analyst at Starline Windows and Autodesk’s Queen of Prefab, Amy Marks.
You can do this with one simple step: download this free eBook to discover popular tips from pros around the world.
Autodesk’s 34 time-saving topics will change the way you work, and help you uncover command options, keyboard combos and new functionality to work more efficiently, save time and automate your workload.
Download today by filling out the following form below.
Do you have an issue displaying the Grading Optimization (GO) window with Civil 3D 2022.1 and GO 2022.2? If so, read on.
I have been working with GO since it arrived, but when I installed the Civil 3D 2022.1 and GO 2022.2 updates, GO failed to display once I click “Optimize”. The windows actually appear, but only the shadow edge.
Autodesk is working on a public fix, but they asked me to try this, and it worked. Create a new Windows Environment variable with this name and value.
Variable: USE_ANGLE
Value: d3d11
This story was originally published by MIKE LANDERS on the Bluebeam Blog.
With smart PDFs now being generated as part of bid packages thanks to a variety of digital tools within the marketplace, end–users can now use technology to boost the visual appeal, accuracy, and overall value of bid packages.
“Bluebeam Revu can actually make use of those smart PDFs by making sure that it allows estimators to take off quantities accurately,” said Deepak Maini, a qualified mechanical engineer with two decades of experience. “The tools that you’ve got available in Bluebeam Revu, the accuracy of picking regions, the accuracy of visually searching items, and the standardization potential make it a great asset to making a successful bid package.”
Now a noted guest lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and University of New South Wales (UNSW), Maini, the current national technical manager for Cadgroup Australia, advocates for paperless bid packages and credits Revu as a crucial piece of the puzzle.
“In the Australia-New Zealand market, and actually in the global market as a whole, the climate is very competitive,” Maini said. “The process of taking off quantities within today’s market needs to be accurate and needs to be fast. And that’s where Bluebeam Revu plays a massive role. With it, the estimator can take off quantities on one job and then quickly get onto the next job without wasting too much time.”
“There’s absolutely no comparison between Revu and paper,” Maini continued. “We are talking about projects going in hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars as well, which means that you’ve got these PDF sheets getting delivered to you, which are not two or three sheets. You’ve got 100-150 sheets getting delivered and that’s why taking off quantities using an accurate process is really important.”
Ensuring scale can also be achieved within the sophisticated calibration capabilities in Revu. This is crucial when receiving documents as you don’t have to rely on the imagery to be accurate in scale, which could be a huge issue for estimation.
“In Revu, we calibrate the sheet and we find out what scale the objects are at, and then when we are taking off the quantities, it ensures that we use the right scale and we get the right measurements,” Deepak said.
Being able to consistently takeoff accurate quantities is essential to completing bid packages in a timely and accurate manner.
“This is again where Bluebeam Revu is absolutely fantastic,” Maini said. “I create certain specialized and takeoff tools, I can then have them sitting in my own custom toolset, and then I can distribute the toolset within my own team, which means that everybody who’s taking off the quantities will have the same display of quantities. ”
Cost values can also be plugged into Revu, allowing instant dollar projections for the project. “As you take off the quantities, it gives you the dollar value of that quantity right there in front of you,” Maini said. “You can have that displayed as a table on the sheet, which means that you can straight away find out how much it’s going to cost you.”
The ability within the digital tools in Revu to drive accuracy and consistency among estimators allows firms the flexibility to more accurately staff projects, without the risk of lesser experienced estimators using a process of their own, which might hinder the accuracy of the quantity takeoffs and the success of the bid as a whole.
Mega Mold produces the best world class tooling for the automotive, industrial and consumer markets. For over 28 years, their team of specialists deliver tooling that is superior in class for cycle time and part quality in all aspects of plastic injection mold designs.
Mega Mold provides their customers quality services including:
Mega Mold and members of the SolidCAD team have had a long-lasting partnership that predates SolidCAD and began over 20 years ago. As a loyal and legacy customer, SolidCAD’s advanced manufacturing team has always provided the knowledge and assistance throughout Mega Mold’s growth.
As a leader in the tooling industry, Mega Mold needed an advanced solution with powerful capabilities that could check features during the machining process, automate tedious tasks and make decisions. More specifically, they were looking for an easy way to help verify workpiece accuracy and help make their machining process more efficient. Mega Mold knew that they needed a solution that would reduce machine time, rework, and unnecessary setup time.
Mega Mold always looked to have a partner with a localized team, that could easily support them on-site during any implementation and provide continued education to their employees. Knowing that SolidCAD could provide them just that, they offered an analysis of their current machining workflow and identified that Autodesk’s Fusion 360 with the Machining Extension was needed to eliminate their challenge and speed up machine times.
SolidCAD provided implementation services, including ongoing support and training for the software so that all members of the team understood Fusion 360’s functionalities.
Understanding that Mega Mold needed a quick solution, SolidCAD worked promptly with Mega Mold’s Managers and Operators to fulfill their requirement and introduce Fusion 360 into their process in only 5-6 hours.
Fusion 360’s capabilities allowed them to check their workpiece accuracy using their current machine probe and easily access advanced on-machine verification.
This implementation reduced hours that were often spent on unnecessary set-up times. They quickly realized that since the job was automatically verified within tolerance before removing it from the machine table, they could produce high quality finished molds and mold components without the need for a post machine inspection, removing any inaccuracies, and allowing them to meet client deadlines faster.
SolidCAD continues to support Mega Mold during the introduction of their process and provide on-going training for their employees.
Are you designing a pond with a sloped bottom? If so, you may be interested in this technique.
To watch the short video demonstrating the complete quick step-by-step process, click here.
Whenever we are working with AutoCAD Electrical, one of the key features that we have when we are creating our drawings, is the ability to
create and assign the custom wire types that we will use throughout our schematic designs. Every time that we create a new drawing, by default the only wire that is going to be available is the WIRES layer which is the generic wire type that the software uses when we first create any type of wire as displayed on Figure.1 in the Create/Edit Wire Type editing window.
Having to manually enter the types of wires that we are going to use is a task that cannot be avoided the very 1st time that we create a drawing, but once we having created the list of wires that we need to use in one drawing, we can reuse them over and over again.
To achieve this we need to do the following:
Figure 2To take this one step further, we can standardize the wires that we use with your CAD Manager so we can import that list of wires directly into your templates. To achieve this we need to open the current template as a DWT file, then repeat the exact same process that was described earlier.
Once we have completed importing all the wires we need to re-save the template as a DWT one more time to make sure it will be usable as a template in the future.
This will further standardize the wires that the designers are required to use and remove the guess work by setting the wires at a template level.
This story was originally published by DOMONIC DIAZ-WESTON on the Bluebeam Blog.
Every construction trade plays a different role in each construction project. As a result, they are likely to find different values in the myriad tools and features available in Bluebeam Revu.
Kaaron Lee-Wah, an electrician in Toronto, is no different. To him, Revu has become essential ever since his boss asked him to explore how to completely digitize his company’s electrical drawings from paper. Revu has allowed him to use tools in the software that make his job more efficient, helping him to save time on previous paper-based tasks.
These are the Revu features that are unquestionably Kaaron’s favorite:
Tool Chest: “This allows you to create custom icons to help identify and create a clean and easy layout for your guys in the field to follow along. When it comes to electricians using Bluebeam, there are many different panels, circuits and devices that we have to account for and include on our drawing. With Tool Chest, you can create icons, color whatever size you need it, all in a matter of seconds—and they look very professional.”
Calibrate: “The Calibrate feature is pretty dope, where you’re able to upload a PDF version of any drawing—whether it be mechanical, architecture, electrical, even landscape—and you can customize that calibration to that specific scale. So, drawings come in many different scales, and other software have a hard time picking up and reading that scale of a drawing. But Bluebeam has a great feature, the Command + M tool, that can measure it, and you’re able to customize and calibrate any drawing or PDF you upload into Bluebeam, which gives you access to finding whatever measurement that you need—whether it be in millimeters or meters or feet—all off the custom calibration once you upload it into your Bluebeam Revu.”
Overlay: “It’s kind of similar to Snapshot, but with Overlay you’re able to grab the entire page itself and overlay it on top of a second set of drawings, and then that can help you identify or troubleshoot any issues with architecture and electrical drawings.”
Snapshot: “I find with Snapshot you’re able to now copy a section—let’s say the electrical drawings—and bring them over to the architectural drawings if you want to overlay for a certain reason. So, what we do in the electrical trade is I’ll take a Snapshot of the electrical drawings of let’s say a unit in a condo, and I will overlay it on the architectural drawings, which show you more detail—wall sizes, how long a wall is, how deep the wall is. It’s an amazing feature, and it comes in clutch every time.”
Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAkD-l8v_m8
