Category: SBS Blog

New President Joins SBS Team

“Al Eliasen has recently joined our executive team, bringing a great depth of management experience to the company.  Al was previously the president of OSI, a division of Aspen Technology.  Al aligns well with our customer and employee centric culture and is a firm believer in the SBS core values of Flexibility, Innovation and a Passion for Customer Success. 

I’m quite pleased to have Al on board.  Al will initially be focused on working with the team to align the organization structure, processes, and metrics to support our accelerating growth.  The rate of change within the utility and communications marketplace is unprecedented, and our customers are continuing to actively adopt our intelligent design solutions as organizations aim to improve productivity and enable digital twins and BIM to improve the overall quality of their design, construction and infrastructure management processes.  Al’s experience will help us immensely. 

With Al assuming the role of President, I’m excited to focus on my responsibilities as Chief Executive Officer for the foreseeable future including customer engagement, partner development, and strategy and product roadmaps.  The company continues to be an exciting place to work and there are many things we seek to accomplish as we advance our intelligent design solutions throughout the global marketplace. “

– Dennis Beck, Chief Executive Officer

SPATIAL BUSINESS SYSTEMS LLC APPOINTS AL ELIASEN AS PRESIDENT

Littleton, CO, April 5th, 2023 – Spatial Business Systems LLC (“SBS” or the “Company”), a leading provider of intelligent design software to utilities and other critical network infrastructure providers, announced today that Al Eliasen has been appointed President.

“I am thrilled to join the SBS team and support the Company through its next phase of growth. I look forward to building on the Company’s strong culture and reputation as a leading provider of intelligent design software to the utilities & critical infrastructure market,” said Mr. Eliasen. “I look forward to collaborating closely with Dennis and the exceptional team at SBS to further SBS’s strong track record of innovation and growth.”

Mr. Eliasen brings more than 30 years of experience leading operations within leading software and engineering organizations, having most recently served as President of OSI, a division of Aspen Technology (NASDAQ:AZPN), a provider of open automation, network control and optimization solutions to the utility industry.

Dennis Beck, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of SBS, commented, “This is an exciting time for SBS and I also look forward to partnering with Al to drive transformational growth in the years to come and continue to serve our customers with excellent service.”

Mr. Eliasen received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MS in Management from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

ABOUT SPATIAL BUSINESS SYSTEMS LLC

SBS is a leading provider of intelligent design software and spatial data integration solutions to many of the world’s largest utilities and infrastructure firms across North America, Europe and Australia. The Company’s suite of vertical-focused software supports the engineering and design of critical network infrastructure assets, creating real-world models that are used to manage workflows, facilitate collaboration and standardize design rules. SBS provides its software solutions to over 200 enterprise customers and is headquartered in Littleton, Colorado.

Media Contact: Daniel Yunger Kekst CNC
212‐521‐4800

Join us in Germany at booth #104 to learn how SBS solutions are leveraging the power of GIS to transform the design and management of critical network infrastructure.  

Learn how our intelligent design solutions can add tremendous value to your infrastructure projects. Esri International Infrastructure Management & GIS Conference (International IMGIS) connects utility professionals like SBS with other industry experts to share our solutions and products. SBS will be highlighting our Utility Network FME plug-in as well as our geo-enabled infrastructure design solution, Automated Utility Design (AUD).  On Monday of the conference please join SBS CEO Dennis Beck as he presents a session on how geo-enabled CAD supports BIM for utilities. 

Date:

April 17-19, 2023 

Details:  

Located at the Kap Europa Congress Center | Frankfurt, Germany 

For registration and additional details visit-  

https://www.esri.com/en-us/about/events/international-imgis/overview

SBS is pleased to announce the release of the SDS-P&C 8.3.1 product update this week. Read below to learn more about the top 3 enhancements added to the latest SDS-P&C toolkit. 

NEW: MicroStation Replace Block Tool 

• To assist those users that are converting from MicroStation to regular AutoCAD or AutoCAD-Electrical and SDS-P&C, we’ve developed a tool that works on existing MicroStation (or other) block instances that have incremented names, such as Fuse-1, Fuse-2, and so on. Our new tool works to consolidate these blocks into one name (which could be an ACAD block or an ACADE block). So, in the previous example, all blocks could be consolidated into one block such as “Fuse” or maybe “HFU11_FUSE” if using ACADE + SDS-P&C. 

Selective Component Update Dialog Suppression 

• We’ve added a Filter button to the post-“Edit Component” dialog (“Update Child Mode: Normal or Selective?” dialog) to have it only come up for selected family codes. This will provide control over Edit Component Update Modes to help streamline user workflows and result in faster designs. 

Workpoints Enhancement for the SDS_ROLLOVER Tool 

• To assist our users in verifying cable distances on station plan views, we’ve enhanced the SDS Rollover tool when hovering over SDS workpoints so that the pop-up rollover display now shows total orthogonal distances between it and other connected workpoints to it. 

SBS is always seeking to improve its products and hopes this latest version will help improve the accuracy, efficiency, and production of our client’s projects. Please reach out to [email protected] to learn more about this new release or if you have any questions. For further information on this update see the official release notes.  

Click here to download the newest version of SDS-P&C 8.3.1 Thank you for your continued support. 

Come and connect with SBS at booth #3713

This conference offers unparalleled education, information, products, and services related to electricity delivery/response, communications, sustainability, and much more.

Learn more about how to address the current demands of the market at the 3-day conference. We hope to see you there! 

Join Steve Kaufman for a discussion about updates to the Substation Design Suite™ Physical for Inventor (SDS – Physical for Inventor) 8.2 release on Wednesday, December 14, 2022.

The 40 minute webinar will discuss the enhancements and the resolved issues in this new release of the SDS – Physical for Inventor product. Learn new information regarding the additional new models added to Utility Content. New to Utility Content is the Inventor app that will allow vendors & utilities to manage their own content. Follow Spatial Business Systems on LinkedIn and YouTube to access more information!

Title: Utility Content Review and SDS Physical for Inventor 8.2 Release Webinar

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2022, at 12:00 PM EST 

Details:  

• Visit https://www.spatialbiz.com/substation-design-suite/ for more information about Substation Design Suite products. 

• Access the content on the Spatial Business Systems YouTube channel after the event. 

REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR HERE. 

Wednesday, December 14, 2022 

12:00 PM EST 

SBS is pleased to announce the release of the SDS-P&C 8.3 product update this week. Read below to learn more about the top 5 enhancements added to the latest SDS-P&C toolkit.

New command – SDS Tool Settings (SDS_SETTINGS)

• A large enhancement has been made with the introduction of the SDS Settings tool. This tool makes configuration of the SDS P&C Toolkit a breeze for the admins, configurators, and superusers out there. There is now a dialog with the ability to store settings for 18 tools in an external .csv file for either the environment, client, or specifically for the ACADE project.
• The SDS Settings dialog allows the admin or configurator to specify all toolkit settings and save them to a template or push them out to many or all drawings in the ACADE project. From the user’s perspective, they now see a dropdown at the top of each of these 18 tool dialogs that allows them to pick from the defaults their admin or configurator has set, use custom settings, or use their “last used” settings (legacy behavior).
• Users now receive an easier, more streamlined experience, while no longer having to worry whether the parameters in each tool’s dialog are correct. They can simply launch the tool they need, ensure the dropdown is correct, and run the tool.

New command – Master/Reference-Only Checking and Surf Tool (SDS_REFONLY_QA)

• Master/Reference-Only relationships can be more easily troubleshooted with the addition of the Master/Reference-Only checking tool. This “surf dialog” lists all the Master/Reference-Only relationships in the active project and allows the user to review and navigate any issues they see.
• This dialog shows a couple of common linking issues such as duplicated masters, ref-only symbols with no master, etc. After navigating through the dialog, users can then use our other Master/Reference-Only tools to clean and/or correct any errors.

New command – Checking for Master/Reference-Only Issues in Recently Added Drawings (SDS_CHECK_ADDED_DWGS)

• This tool was created to help ease the standards-to-project workflow for clients that rely heavily on Master/Reference-Only functionality. This command is designed to run immediately after performing AutoCAD Electrical “Copy To,” “Add Active Drawing,” or “Add Drawings…” commands from the ACADE project manager.
• This command then checks the recently added drawings against the existing project drawings for any issues related to Master/Reference-Only relationships. It will automatically freshen duplicated master relationships to avoid errors and present certain cases to the user for them to choose whether to freshen the GUIDs of the symbols on the drawings being added.

New command – AutoCAD DWGPROPS to ACE/ACADE Drawing Properties (SDS_WDP_DWGPROPS)

• This new command also assists in the standards-to-project workflow of our clients, assisting with drawing property workflows. It provides an easy way to push certain drawing properties stored in the AutoCAD DWGPROPS on standards drawings to the active project’s .wdp file and AutoCAD Electrical’s Drawing Properties. This could also potentially be used to bring properties down from Document Management Systems such as the Autodesk Vault.

SDS_TBL tool – Added a “%Z” Column Suffix Option

• A new “%Z” column suffix option displays a value that is dependent on the On-page / Off-page options the user has set up in their Drawing or Project Properties > Cross-references dialog. It also supports “THIS DWG” display, if defined as such, in the Project or Drawing Properties. This adds more flexibility for our users to use the SDS Smart Tables tool.

SBS is always seeking to improve its products and hopes this latest version will help improve the accuracy, efficiency, and production of our client’s projects. Please reach out to [email protected] to learn more about this new release or if you have any questions. Click here to download the newest version of SDS-P&C 8.3. Thank you for your continued support.