One of the strengths of AutoCAD Plant 3D is its customizability. For example, it allows users to build custom P&ID symbols and tags to suit their project needs. Whenever I conduct Plant 3D training, I’m always asked if there is a way to copy custom symbols from one project to another. Unfortunately, my answer was always no. That is, until this new feature of AutoCAD Plant 3D 2022.
Say hello to Project Compare. Project Compare allows you to see differences from 2 projects and lets you sync data from one to the other.
In this example I am comparing a SEED project with a DEMO project. The SEED project contains the custom P&ID symbol. As you can see, the tool compares more than just P&ID objects.
I’ve selected the P&ID category and applied the synchronization settings. The preview will provide a list of what items will be synchronized. After reviewing the information and a few clicks I can now bring in the custom symbol into my DEMO project.
After the synchronization process, the DEMO project is now updated with the custom symbol from the SEED project and is ready for use.
This new feature is time saving. There is no longer the requirement of rebuilding the symbol for new or existing projects. You can just compare and synchronize.
If you would like more information on this process, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
3D-P consists of a team of mining and positioning technology experts. It was created to bring innovative thinking and new technologies to the mining industry. They have since evolved to bring this approach to several outdoor industrial environments around the world. They continue to work hard to understand the unique environments their clients are working in and the unique needs their operations have.
Streamlining workflows and improving data management with Fusion 360 Manage!
The Challenge
After investigation of their issues, 3D-P identified two specific areas they wanted to improve; (1) the inefficient design management that relied heavily on manual data entry, and outdated practices for managing their Bill of Materials (BOMs) and (2) challenges of change management and communication. As the company grew, they realized that a lot of their processes were slowing them down and needed to be optimized.
Particularly, they were able to identify their need for a redefined workflow and sought out a PLM strategy that would help them better share and collaborate their BOMs with other departments from design to manufacturing and improve the way they managed their regulatory documents. They wanted to have the ability to quickly identify documents that were related to a specific component in their products, rather than manually digging up information.
Their goal was to have a centralized system that would help them identify changes and communicate them effectively with other parties involved. After diligently investigating six different platforms, they reached out to the SolidCAD team to help them on their journey to success.
The Solution
Partnering with SolidCAD’s Enterprise Team, 3D-P decided to proceed with an implementation of Autodesk’s Fusion 360 Manage. The solution enabled them to achieve efficiency and control of their BOM’s, documentation and change control processes. Working with SolidCAD gave them access to the expertise needed, ensuring the solution would be designed to achieve their goals.
The BOM management feature in Fusion 360 Manage helped 3D-P to have more structured process when they create, modify, and manage both their electrical and mechanical BOMs. Since Autodesk PLM solution is in the cloud, 3D-P’s manufacturing team always had access to the latest information. The company was able keep track of their changes and more importantly identify the business areas that required improvements. Since the change and BOM environments in PLM are connected, 3D-P was able to take advantage of the revision control and easily keep track of their product changes.
As an added bonus, team members within their engineering department were already familiar with Autodesk products and adapted to the implementation of their new software with a shortened learning curve.
The Results
Fusion 360 Manage is now their single source of truth. While they previously spent a lot of time consulting various departments and team members to verify data, the information is now in one central location, easily managed by their engineering manager.
Their change management is now more ergonomic and practical. Team members are notified of any changes or updates, ensuring everyone is working with the latest data.
It now takes their team a third of the time to manage BOMs.
Overall, they save 7-10 hours of rework that would often be due to human error in their design and engineering data.
Testimonial
One of our core values as a company is that relationships matter. We’re all about building relationships with our customers and working to enable their success. The tool on its own is one thing but in order to be successful, you want someone who can be a good partner and that’s what SolidCAD has been from the beginning. You want a partner that understands the importance of that relationship and is willing to work with you. That’s the key to success.
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In my last article, we covered the features in Bluebeam Revu that all concrete subcontractors should know. I started the piece saying I’m a firm believer that every specialty contractor could benefit from implementing Revu. To continue with this series, I want to highlight the next subcontractor on site, the framing contractor.
Let’s look again at some creative ways Bluebeam Revu is being used in the industry.
It’s the framing contractor’s turn to show off and again prove my theory that every specialty contractor could benefit from implementing Revu in their everyday workflows.
Whether you’re timber framing single-family homes, multi-family residential or steel stud commercial tenant improvement, this article applies to you. If you’re interested in seeing the more technical side of these workflows in action, check out my article.
Material Takeoffs: With the complexities of wood framing, estimating would be difficult without some degree of guesswork. Not only do we have different nominal lumber for different wall thicknesses, but we also have different products like glulam, LVL, timbers, Versa, BCI rafters and I-joists with different series, as well as CDX plywood and OSB. With all of those comes a library of sizes, shapes and thicknesses.
Do we base on averages for square footage or measure the linear footage of walls? If our material takeoffs are too low, the project is on hold waiting for supply shortages. If it’s too high, we have an owner assuming you’re hauling the lumber they paid for to the next job. Also, when material arrives, how do I know what goes where?
With the flexibility of Revu, we can build custom tools with formulas embedded to not only get the length of material needed for the facia board, but that same markup could calculate the sub-facia and number of outlookers as well.
Starting with the end in mind, takeoff tools can be built to calculate several materials at the same time, like an assembly. This allows a chance to embed industry know-how and ensure materials aren’t overlooked. Obviously, you can imagine this method easily translates into the pre-construction of wall panels or modularized construction by applying mark numbers to the panel assemblies.
So, you’re in charge of your company’s Civil 3D standards and drawing template and you’re annoyed when users don’t use the documented naming convention. Read on to find out more.
Users will typically do what’s easiest, especially when the heat is on from an impending deadline. They don’t always take the time to find the standards manual and read the proper section when they’re not sure if they’re doing the right thing.
When Civil 3D objects are created, they all need names. We’ve all seen Alignment(12) and Surface(235). These are terrible names! Road A and Existing Ground would be better, respectively. While it’s great to have a documented standard, why not have something in the users’ faces, Just-In-Time, when they are creating the objects?
Here is the out of the box naming scheme for surfaces. Surface<[Next Counter(CP)]>, where Next Counter would be 1, 2, 3, etc.
The default for this can be changed in the Settings tab.
Why not set up the default with a hint to the desired name(s)? in this case, the user would use one of two conventions.
EG
FG Road A Corridor
This same technique can be used for every Civil 3D object as they all have settings for default names. I’ll let you decide on what a good default would be, but it will help your users more easily conform to your standard. Just sayin’.
As a bonus tip, consider creating these objects in your template with their names already defined. When a user starts a new file using that template, the objects will already be there available to be edited and already named with pertinent descriptions. This technique may not work for everything, but it certainly works for quite a few.
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 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.
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.
Rising to the Challenges of the Industry with Vault, Revit, Inventor, Autodesk Construction Cloud and PLM software!
The Challenge
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.
The Solution
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.
The Results
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:
Improved project management for office staff, allowing for visibility over processes and projects.
Introduced Revit and Inventor to streamline their design process.
Automation between Revit and Inventor allowed for automatic model creation based on Revit Schedule.
Implementing Vault and connecting it to PLM software has led to accurate data sharing to be available remotely.
Automation between ACC and PLM software meant that projects can be visible in personal productivity applications as well as project and organizational management allowing for improved resource management from beginning to end of projects.
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.
Testimonial
We first reached out to SolidCAD to ask for an initial consultation after having searched worldwide for experts in design to manufacturing automation. The management team at SolidCAD listened to our biggest challenges and helped connect us with multiple experts in several disciplines to answer all our questions, however technical and detailed they became. SolidCAD not only helped the Starline Windows management team formulate a strategic plan to increase our ability to deliver productivity tools to our users while simplifying change management; they also provided key resources to configure and integrate new systems, onboard new users and train key players to help us accomplish our goals in record time.
-Catherine Walmsley,
Solutions Analyst at Starline Windows
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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.
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.”
Three keys to a successful bid
Accuracy of the scale of the sheet
The right set of customizable and standardized digital tools
Accurate cost values associated with materials and labor
Quantity takeoffs and accuracy
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.
Standardizing
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.
