Latest SBS Release Offers New Advancements in Underground Utility Design
With the recent release of Automated Utility Design™ 7.3 (AUD), SBS continues to push the envelope for modeling and designing distribution utility assets. This post will bring you up to date on the latest enhancements we have made to our underground design functionality.
The SDS Model Editor and SD Model Cloud will now be replaced with the new Utility Content Hub™ (UCH). UCH gives you direct access to utilitycontent.com without ever having to leave Autodesk Inventor. UCH also has additional tools to add SDS intelligence to individual models and prepare models for design checks. (more…)
LAKEWOOD, CO —SBS announces the release of Utility Content for Substation Design Suite™ (SDS). The announcement was made at the Substation Design Solution Industry Consortium (SDSIC) Spring meeting in Alexandria, LA. This follows the SBS 2017 beta program that tested Content Configurators and included a limited availability release of Utility Content. The predecessor site, Substation3D.com, has since been decommissioned. (more…)
August 29, 2018 – Managing Total Cost of Ownership for Utility Design Software
Dennis Beck, David Wilbur, SBS
We have recently released the latest version of our Automated Utility Design™ product and are quite excited about the continued progression the product has made as we focus on our three primary themes of improved design throughput, world-class configurable integration and a continued commitment to reduce total cost of ownership.
The last 4 releases of AUD and Utility DataHub™ have been consistently moving toward achieving the intent of Evergreen IT. Evergreen IT is founded on the principles of automating software processes in such a manner that the software is always up to date. This allows organizations to avoid getting into the trap of highly customized legacy systems that require costly upgrades that take years to plan and implement. This is more prevalent in cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, but the principles can certainly apply to software products like AUD. We have seen over the years that our utility clients often get stuck into very expensive upgrades for their GIS, CAD and related systems. Here is what we have been doing to change this longstanding burden that utilities have had to bear.
While it is important to reduce overall cost of ownership, the other fundamental advantage to this architecture is the ability to take advantage of the new software capabilities. We have cumulatively added over 200 improvements to AUD since acquiring the technology from Autodesk. Organizations that are able to take advantage of the productivity improvements, advanced configuration capabilities and key security updates are able to realize the value of an AUD subscription in a productive and forward-looking manner.
We look forward to helping our clients transform their business to new levels of customer service while reducing the burdens of legacy software systems. As always, we look forward to your comments and feedback. Hopefully we will get to see you at our Peer Utility Group, which is being held at Louisville Gas & Electric this week.
Packaged Solution for Utility Workflow Integration goes from Walk to Run
Dennis Beck, President, SBS
This summer marks the 5 year anniversary of our packaged integration product, Utility DataHub™. Our original goals for this innovative product were to:
Perspectives on the Recent Autodesk – Esri Announcement
Dennis Beck, President, SBS
I recently attended Autodesk University, where I witnessed an on-stage discussion between Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI, and Andrew Anagnost, President of Autodesk. Jack described the two companies as having reached a “turning point” in achieving cooperation between the worlds of engineering design and geographic sciences. In the most general sense, the companies have agreed to work together to improve the integration of their product platforms.This would allow partners to create better, more connected products and workflows, with improved support for mutual customers. Jack described it as, “understanding precedes action” and Autodesk’s mantra for the conference was repeated several times; designers and engineers will be able to do, “more, better with less”.
As a company focused on CAD/GIS integration and interoperability, we here at SBS are quite excited for the announcement and want to share our perspectives in this post. Comments will be oriented towards infrastructure, particularly for utility and telecommunications assets, but I’m hopeful they will be applicable to readers in many related disciplines. Here goes…
Rather obvious, granted – but CAD and GIS are here to stay. It’s quite important to see the two industry leaders in their respective fields acknowledge this point. These industries have matured, and roles of these product platforms are much better understood. The announcement confirms what we have believed: that GIS and CAD have their own, unique capabilities that are important to an industrialized society.
I like to keep it simple; in the world of infrastructure, CAD is generally used to build things, and GIS is generally used to operate and manage assets. Both systems analyze, but for different purposes. CAD may perform structural analysis and constructability studies. GIS analyzes system-level plans and human interaction with the environment. Historically, there has been a desire amongst the CAD providers and GIS providers to compete for all things related to computerized graphics. This may have made sense 20 years ago, but the evolution of these product families has made it clear to the marketplace that each product is well-suited to perform more specific core competencies.
Having been involved with the implementation of both GIS and CAD-based design tools over the last 25 years, it is very clear that customers are faced with significant challenges as they try to accomplish GIS functions within CAD and CAD functions within GIS. Here are some of the key pain points I have seen:
Extensive customization
Both CAD and GIS require extensive customization to address requirements outside of their normal domains. Vendors and customers have often subscribed to this approach, often with a desire to retain a single vendor platform. Unfortunately, it usually does not achieve cost savings – and CAD and GIS still wind up being necessary to perform the tasks that they are best suited to perform. No matter the reason, the customizations have been very expensive and have rarely achieved the desired benefits.
Expensive upgrades
Once a system has been extensively customized, the ability to upgrade becomes quite limited. This can also impact related systems that have been integrated. To make things worse, upgrading the external system can even break the customizations in the original system. The planning and rework becomes very intense, drawn out and incredibly expensive. Whenever systems are significantly modified for these types of functions, whatever the cost was to perform the initial customization, you will spend multiples of that amount maintaining it.
Quality Issues
This is perhaps the most troubling issue. Designs performed in GIS lack adequate accuracy to support the construction process. This can cause expensive rework, or even worse, unsafe design and construction. And designs performed in CAD, without proper GIS integration, often lack the necessary information to perform insightful, high-quality design documentation necessary to construct the end deliverables.
Lost Productivity
Another area that impacts both systems is the tremendous loss of productivity that is caused by gathering and redrawing of information. This also creates a lack of timely data and woefully inadequate communications between stakeholders during the design and construction process.
Advanced civil engineering projects, traditionally designed with CAD tools, will always deal with detailed geographic
information to generate construction plans. GIS tools will always be performing design functions (often termed “Geodesign”) to address pressing issues in urban planning, environmental modeling and globalization. As a CAD/GIS integrator we appreciate the differences and have shown where our utility clients typically see overlap in this diagram.
This example involves utility work and asset management workflows. Both GIS and CAD systems are vitally important to performing these transactions and both products are necessary partners to support each other. The overlap we tend to see (in yellow) tends to be around mobile transactions and lightweight design sketches, which can be performed by CAD, GIS and specialized mobile applications.
The need for advanced integration between the systems will continue to be vital to the success of integrated, enterprise-level application deployments.
For all of us in the CAD and GIS communities, it will be interesting to see how these two large organizations move forward with this new relationship. If done right, a higher purpose can truly be served. For users of the systems, it would ideally show up as a better, smoother customer experience with higher quality designs, operations and analyses. Beyond that, there lies an opportunity to improve our rapidly shrinking world with truly smart cities and intelligent infrastructure networks. If we eliminate the barriers to sharing information in this area, it is easy to envision better, smarter designs that generate less waste, consume less energy, reduce construction rework and provide safer infrastructure for a rapidly growing population. There are many other benefits out there that come to mind, so as always, I look forward to your comments.
Congratulations to the Substation Design Solution Industry Consortium for hitting the 500 active member milestone! It started 5 years ago with some key partners and a few great customers and it has turned into the leading gathering for substation design professionals. SBS relies heavily on input from the SDSIC and we hope all of the members continue to enjoy the website and semi-annual conferences. We appreciate all the valuable information that is exchanged between the members.
SBS is pleased to announce the commercial release of Automated Utility Design™ 7.2
SBS has released the latest version of our industry leading electric, gas and water distribution design tool – Automated Utility Design™ (AUD). Enhancements were implemented based on the feedback of our Peer Utility Group (PUG) and the 17 new customers we’ve added in the past year. Below is a selection from the enhancements to AUD: (more…)
Intelligent integration reduces design time by over 50%
Intuitively, it makes sense that integration of utility distribution design with other information systems like GIS, financials and materials management would be a smart thing to do. A recent presentation at the SBS Peer Utility Group gave us some proof to confirm our intuition. (more…)
PPL Electric Utilities will be hosting the Spring meeting of the Substation Design Solution Industry Consortium (SDSIC) April 9 – 12 at the PPL Conference Center at Walbert, near Allentown, PA. The SDSIC is a group of utilities, consulting engineers and key vendors that have adopted or are considering adoption of SBS’ Substation Design Suite™ software products. Member utilities host conferences on a rotating basis. Last year’s Fall meeting was held at San Diego Gas and Electric and hosted nearly 200 substation design professionals from utilities and leading engineering firms. For more information on the SDSIC please visit http://www.sdsconsortium.com/. More information on Substation Design Suite™ can be found Here.