Welcome to AECWeekly! Happy New Year! Until recently the AEC industry has been slow to adopt computerized document management. Although there is a great need for it in AEC, since projects are long lived and generate an enormous volume of documents and content, there has not been much development from engineering document management vendors for AEC firms. Read about this industry trend in this week’s Industry News. Part II will be published next week.
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Industry News
Managing Your AEC Content – Part I
by Susan Smith
Until recently the AEC industry has been slow to adopt computerized document management. Although there is a great need for it in AEC, since projects are long lived and generate an enormous volume of documents and content, there has not been much development from engineering document management vendors for AEC firms.
High end systems such as Documentum, which manage the entire spectrum of documents across the enterprise, do not offer specific management of engineering CAD documents. Recently, as a result of AEC firms’ growing interest in document management, document management vendors have begun to address AEC firms’ challenges.
Currently Bentley’s ProjectWise offers a very robust content management solution and most recently their ProjectWise StartPoint, which maximizes the document management capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint, for smaller businesses and enterprise.
Synergis has been offering their Adept data management system to the AEC, mechanical engineering and other markets for over 20 years. The company is an authorized developer for Autodesk, SolidWorks and other CAD companies. Their solution, Synergis Adept, integrates with Autodesk 2D and 3D design products, SolidWorks, as well as MS Office applications.
Synergis Adept
Martha Lubow, director of marketing at Synergis said that the company is “seeing more interest coming out of the AEC side of things.” Manufacturing has been ahead of AEC in this arena, just as it has led in the adoption of 3D, said Lubow, as that industry deals with complex drawings and products that have very complex parts and relationships. Also, Lubow pointed out, “the sheer volume of information, not only for the part and assembly but the associated engineering change order, which may include a word document, Excel spreadsheet, demands management throughout the lifecycle of the project.”
Lubow noted that the Windows operating system has for 20 years, molded their approach to document management to mean folders, nested folders and non-standardized file names. “The folder system is very linear – not necessarily the way individuals like to organize information. The folder system starts to buckle under the growing amount of project data – meaning hundreds of millions of documents in hundreds of thousands of folders and nested folders. Searching through all those folders is the least efficient way to find and store information,” she pointed out. “The same problem exists for email, where we file critical communications in another, unrelated folder system.” In an AEC organization, often engineers use CAD applications and store all their “folders” on a C drive. “When company critical and sensitive data is stored out on someone’s hard disk, the company is assuming a huge risk – what is the computer crashes, or is lost or stolen? It’s also difficult to share data with other people when it is stored in isolated stove pipes of information.”
How can organizations organize their critical data in a way that’s different from folders? “We see a drawing or document as a database unto itself, because it includes ‘metadata’ or data about the document, such as attributes, x-refs or properties.” Adept stores documents along with information about the documents, for example, a design or project number, the last person who worked on the document, the data completed and data started.
“Because the documents are stored along with associated data, users now have four or five different ways of searching for the documents. The most basic way is to use the library card. For example, say you want to search for all the documents associated with one project number. You would enter the project number, let’s say, 404, into a field on an Adept library or profile card and Adept will instantly locate all the relevant drawings and documents for that project. When Adept performs a search, it’s not just searching on my computer, it searches the entire database of drawings and documents on the LAN or WAN. When users look at the search results, they can quickly see all the information associated with the file, for example, whether it’s currently being worked on, its status in a workflow and its revision number. That’s a lot more information than you get from clicking on file folders.”
In the AEC industry, Lubow sees that the way people are handling information is just not working anymore and they’re overwhelmed. Adept is devoted to managing all the documentation that is associated with the project lifecycle. Adept is an enterprise data and product management solution for global, and small to large organizations that offers a single point of control for managing engineering drawings, business documents and related information on a LAN, WAN or across the internet.
To help customers understand how to resolve their data management needs, Synergis experts work with customers to determine what their business processes are, what type of drawings they have, what their infrastructure is like, so they can set up the appropriate profile cards. “You can set up one library card that includes information that’s relevant to engineering, and other library cards with data relevant to marketing, sales or accounting. Depending upon who you are in the organization, you have the ability to pull up the information that’s relevant to you. With Adept it’s more about finding relevant information than casting a large net in hopes of getting the information you need to make an important business decision,” explained Lubow. “Now Google is a great example of a super search engine for indexed data. The problem with a Google search, from my perspective, is that after the first and maybe even second page of search results, the information is increasingly meaningless. In contrast, Adept finds only that information that is relevant to the search criteria you enter.”
Besides offering tight integration with Microsoft Windows and the leading 2D and 3D applications, Adept ships with the latest version of MySQL Pro 5.0. It supports MySQL, MS SQL Server and Oracle. With the newest release of Adept 7, it provides more granular support for SolidWorks configurations and AutoCAD layouts.
Some new features in Adept 7 include:
Future Technology Directions
The U.S. Coast Guard is a leading edge Synergis customer and the largest landowner agency in the Department of Homeland Security. The Coast Guard Logistics Geospatial Integration Center (LoGIC) has been using Adept since 1998 to manage and control documents for the Coast Guard’s 7.6 billion dollar shore plant that consists of over 8,700 buildings and 15,000 structures spread across 1800 sites. Paul Herold, director of LoGIC, said that the idea behind this implementation was to build towards a system that can “extend beyond the engineering department and help us manage data throughout the organization.”
The Coast Guard is now using Adept not only for civil engineering but also facility management in naval, aviation and electronics and technical documentation.
A significant future direction for Adept is integration with still other CAD applications. Up until now, Lubow noted that some APIs for integrating with BIM-based CAD applications have been “lackluster.” Improvements in Revit’s API should make a big difference to future development of a tight integration. Additionally, the Coast Guard is using Graphisoft Archicad is used for building information modeling, and should Graphisoft provide the key API tools, Adept may further drive its integration with multiple building information modeling systems.
Another area where data and document management capabilities are adding value is in the sustainable design movement. Sustainable design requires organizations to manage documentation throughout the lifecycle of a project, complete with metadata about various materials and loads, etc., plus managing the additional LEED and other certifications required by the green movement. According to Synergis Software Authorized Reseller, Ken Hiatt of Peraska Corporation in Beaverton, Ore., “Data management and the need to control all the documentation within a project is essential to achieving sustainable design and green building business processes.”
Summary
In summary, Lubow said that in the real world of solving problems and data management, Synergis’ role is to understand the customers’ problems and processes, and to be there to support customers. “It’s not just about software. It’s about streamlining processes within the entire company.”
“Basically our philosophy is, you own your data,” explained Lubow. “We make it very easy for people to get at their data, which is, by far and away, their most critical business asset.”
Acquisitions/Agreements/Alliances
Nemetschek AG has reached an agreement with the shareholders of the Hungarian company Graphisoft SE, allowing Nemetschek to acquire a majority stake in Graphisoft (call option) on a acquisition price of 9 EUR per share. Nemetschek is aiming for a strategic financial interest in the Hungarian competitor Graphisoft, announced Gerhard Weiß, CEO of Nemetschek AG. Subject to a successful completion of the customary due diligence review and the financing agreements, Nemetschek plans to exercise its call option for the majority stake in Graphisoft shortly.
Autodesk, Inc. announced its elevated relationship with Oracle to provide customers with complete solutions for the creation and sharing of geospatial data within workgroups and across entire organizations. As a Certified Partner with the Oracle(R) PartnerNetwork, Autodesk and Oracle will collaborate on software bundles, technology integration, sales, training and customer support.
Announcements
Deltek, provider of enterprise management software for project-focused organizations, has announced that international engineering services provider, the Wilde Technology Group has selected Deltek Vision(R) industry leading enterprise software designed specifically for project-based firms of all sizes, to help manage the organization's growth across four different companies.
The American Red Cross announced that Bentley Systems, Incorporated of Exton, Pa. has donated software and services, valued at over $500,000 for the design and management of infrastructure in areas impacted by the December 2004 tsunami. This donation is supporting the design of urban and rural water systems to be reconstructed as part of the American Red Cross Tsunami Recovery Program, which provides relief and long-term recovery for millions of people and communities in Indonesia and other tsunami-affected areas.
The Open Design Alliance announced that its corporate headquarters have been relocated in Phoenix, AZ, effective January 1, 2007. The new location will provide a larger, more integrated approach to managing planned future growth. The move indicates the first step in an expansion phase for the Open Design Alliance and its mission to deliver highest value and quality software to its members.
Sivan Design announces that after months of evaluating alternatives, a group of leading roads design companies in Israel have decided to choose CivilCAD as their major design software tool.
The list of companies include a well known and established ones:
New Products
Cimmetry Systems, an Agile Software company, announced the immediate availability of AutoVue 19.1 Service Pack 1 for Solaris servers 9 and 10. Service Pack 1 for AutoVue 19.1 (UNIX) provides Solaris users with 2D and 3D native document visualization for AutoCAD 2007, Autodesk Inventor 11, Mechanical Desktop 2007, MicroStation V8 XM, OneSpace Designer Drafting (ME10) Version 14, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3.0, and SolidWorks 2007.
You can now make TRUE photo-realistic rendering of your SketchUp model without the pain and frustration of learning a complex program. Podium runs completely inside SketchUp from start to finish. It uses SketchUp features such as textures, background colors, groups and shadows to achieve impressive results. Podium is intuitive to SketchUp users. Plus, its simple interface cuts the learning curve to minutes instead of days. Make an impression without the pain. SU Podium Version 1
Contractors can find documents instantly in Dexter + Chaney’s Forefront(TM) Construction Suite using a Google-like search capability in its Document Imaging module. Users can locate individual documents in their entire Forefront file system by entering any word or group of words. Forefront finds those words and lists each document that contains them, displayed by relevancy, and provides a link to open each one.
New Zealand-based ArchonCAD has announced a new 3D Modeling Manual for VectorWorks, specifically aimed at 3D CAD modeling functions in the popular Mac OS X CAD program. It is designed mainly for architects and landscape architects who want to learn advanced 3D modeling.
New VariCAD 2007 1.05 Released This new version of VariCAD includes tools for assembly support (assembly-part links), identical copies (allowing to make the same changes to more solids at once), support for 2D drawing updates after changes in 3D, and other improvements. A free trial version is available for download.
From CAD Systems Unlimited, Inc. comes Slick! ViewPlus v2.0 for Windows. Now supports AutoCAD 2007, Autodesk Mechanical 2007 drawings, and 3D DWF files. View AutoCAD drawings (DWG), design web format (DWF), and drawing interchange files (DXF) files from R12 to 2007 and a wide variety of raster formats. Batch printing of all supported files including PDF. Front-end to SolidWorks, MicroStation, and ACIS viewers. Latest version uploaded 12/25/06.
Around the Web
Autodesk takes back old space to grow, North Bay Business Journal, by Loralee Stevens, December 18, 2006 -- Autodesk is expanding into 20,000-square-feet at 1 McInnis Parkway in San Rafael, the same space the software leader gave up during the high-tech slowdown six years ago.
Between the Lines The error ARX_ERROR: eDuplicateKey can occur if you are working with a file that was saved in the 2004 or earlier DWG format from a 2007 based product. This error is caused by the presence of more recent version of AEC objects that are too complex to save back to an earlier drawing format. Three Object Enabler Hotfixes have been released to prevent these errors.
| Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 | |
| Date: | January 8 - 12, 2007 |
| Place: | Moscone Center
San Francisco, CA USA |
| Macworld Conference & Expo is the world’s most comprehensive event for the Mac operating system. Only Macworld brings together the loyal yet diverse base of Mac users in creative services, education, entertainment, application development, enterprise and small office/home office environments. Combining in-depth educational sessions with displays of innovative products and solutions on the exhibit floor, Macworld Conference & Expo offers professionals and consumers alike the opportunity to discover the latest developments and hottest products in the Mac industry | |