SBS and Autodesk joined together in presenting the webinar: Transitioning from Graphic Work Design to Intelligent Work Design: Creating Digital Twins of Utility Infrastructure Networks.
They were able to share the importance of intelligent, model-based infrastructure design, how CAD and GIS can work together to generate better designs, and how intelligent designs improve asset management via the creation of digital twins.
Please visit this link to register to access the recordings if you missed the webinar or would simply like to review the presentation. If you have further questions, please contact us at [email protected].
SBS will be showcasing our newest products at Booth #106. Come learn how our intelligent design solutions can add tremendous value to your projects. Check out our newest product Substation Design Suite™ – Physical for AutoCAD®.
Esri IMGIS connects utility professionals like SBS with other industry experts to share our GIS solutions and products. SBS will be highlighting our intelligent design solutions integrated with ArcGIS and Utility Network along with some other exciting new developments.
Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, CA
Join us at the SDSIC 2022 Fall Event! The conference will consist of committee updates, peer utility presentations, vendor presentations, round table discussions, and other interactive events.
Title: SDSIC 2022 Fall Event
Date: October 31, 2022-November 3, 2022
Details:
Register and learn more about the conference here.
Located at the Sheraton Overland Park Hotel at the Convention Center in Kansas City, MO
SBS is pleased to announce that we have partnered with Peak Rock Capital to take SBS to the next level of growth in the world of design for utility and critical infrastructure organizations.
Peak Rock is a leading private investment firm based in Austin, Texas that shares our core values of innovation, flexibility and a passion for customer service. The firm has a long track record of successfully supporting companies of our size and stage through multiple phases of growth.
Thanks in large part to our team’s hard work and dedication, SBS has been growing at a rapid pace over the last many years. We have established many great customer relationships and industry partnerships and we continue to experience more and more demand for our solutions as the world invests in cleaner energy and more modern and reliable networked infrastructure.
Why are we partnering with Peak Rock Capital?
Our partnership with Peak Rock will ensure that SBS has the capital and expertise necessary to support our continued growth, both domestically and internationally. Peak Rock’s experienced team offers a wealth of knowledge and seasoned leadership that will help us expand our organization, deepen our industry foothold, and grow the breadth of our product offerings.
As always, our primary focus will continue to be on serving our customers with the industry-leading intelligent design solutions they trust us to deliver. We will also continue to invest in the latest innovations in CAD, GIS, cloud and integration to ensure our customers benefit from the newest technologies. There are many exciting developments in the areas of digital twins, BIM and asset management that are fundamentally aligned with our solutions and we are excited to continue our industry leadership in these areas.
As always, we will continue to share our progress on the goals we’ve set forth as an organization, and we look forward to the bright future ahead for SBS and all our colleagues.
Join SBS and Autodesk® for a webinar on Wednesday, October 19, to learn about how to take advantage of the power of CAD and GIS working together in an intelligent design environment.
During this webinar utility design experts from Autodesk and SBS will show:
The importance of intelligent, model-based infrastructure design
How CAD and GIS can work together to generate better designs
How intelligent designs improve asset management via the creation of digital twins
Title: Creating Digital Twins of Utility Infrastructure Networks
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2022, at 10:00 AM CDT
Whether you joined us in person or online, we hope you enjoyed this year’s conference. We thank each of our presenters for sharing their experiences and expertise. We wouldn’t be able to make this happen without you!
Many of the speakers shared how their organizations have been actively involved in transforming their businesses through industry leading intelligent design products.
A few of the highlights shared from presenters include how one organization has delivered approximately 120 configuration items and completed nearly 65,000 designs since January 2021. Another speaker shared how their organization has reduced design time by 11-40% and will save three to six million dollars per year. Lastly, another organization shared how they use SBS products to help design the distribution network responsible for providing electricity to almost 1.4 million residential and business customers.
Please visit the SBS YouTube Channel to access the recordings if you missed the conference or would simply like to review the presentations. If you have further questions, please contact us at [email protected].
We are excited to be presenting at Autodesk University on Monday, September 26. Dennis Beck, CEO of SBS, will be presenting on how to reap the benefits of intelligent design in utilities.
Title: “Reaping the Benefits of Intelligent Design in Utilities”
SBS has launched Automated Utility Design (AUD) version 8.4. The newest version provides over 20 new product enhancements as well as resolving several issues from the previous 8.3 version.
With the latest enhancements in version 8.4, you can now more efficiently produce quality designs. Here are our top five favorite updates:
Two new commands: AUDCOPY and AUDPASTE
These commands provide the ability to copy and paste features, including linear features, within the current design or into new designs, while maintaining connectivity, containment, and attribution of the features being copied.
Default Copy and Paste options can be specified in AUDOPTIONS and are presented as keyword selections when executing the commands.
Additionally, copied features can be exported to a GeoJSON format for use in external applications that support that format (see below).
JSON and GeoJSON formats
The AUDCOPY command can be configured to export copied features and their relationships to a .json file that can be used as data for the AUDPASTE command.
Alternatively, .geojson files from the Export option of AUDCOPY will save to a GeoJSON compliant format with the basic geometry and attribute data for use with GeoJSON compliant external applications.
Inventor part definition .inz import
The Part Editor can now import the new .inz file format exported from the SBS Substation Design Suite Inex Inventor tool.
When imported, either the entire top-level assembly or any level of nested subcomponents can be extracted to equivalent AutoCAD block-based parts with AUD compatible ports, drawing properties, and clearance tagged solid geometry.
Assembly feature templates with multiple point and line objects
A new optional data model and feature class is now available for creating assemblies. The assembly data model may be included by specifying the 5.1.1 data model in a TemplateSpec.xml when creating a template.
To use the assembly capabilities, assign a model and part where the Part dwg is itself an AUD industry model drawing with features. When digitized, the part drawing features will be copied into the main drawing and associated to the assembly feature.
Automatic part import and model creation from available blocks
A checkbox option is now available in the Part Editor refresh and import windows to enable automatic creation and updating of corresponding models when parts are imported.
We hope you enjoy these new updates as much as we do. If you’re interested in learning more about AUD version 8.4, please contact us at [email protected]or view the Automated Utility Design 8.4 Release Notes available from the SBS Support Site. Click here to review the Release Notes or download the newest version.
After two years of virtual conferences, we are excited to gather in person with you for our 9th Annual Peer Utility Group Conference. Join us live at the beautiful Heritage Eagle Bend Golf Club in Denver, Colorado for this terrific event! Register today to receive early bird pricing.
Planning is currently underway. Please check back on our PUG Page regularly for updates on available sessions and activities. For those unable to attend in person, we will share the link to the livestream. Please contact Taylor Forster with any questions: [email protected].
Location: Heritage Eagle Bend Golf Club, 23155 E Heritage Pkwy, Aurora, CO 80016
SBS announces new enhancements to industry-leading AUD infrastructure design application
SBS is pleased to announce extensive enhancements to our industry-leading Automated Utility Design (AUD) product to support the needs of telecommunications design professionals. AUD has had a very successful track record for electric and gas utilities by automating many of their design calculations and workflows while integrating with related business systems such as GIS, work and asset management and mobile applications.
When we set out to take AUD to the next level for communications organizations, we focused on addressing some of the key needs we have seen in the marketplace. With those needs in mind we set out with to accomplish the following objectives:
Deliver a modern, model-based design platform, thus ensuring that the design is based on real-world models (known as digital twins) that can support not just design, but the engineering, construction and operational needs of the communications industry
Leverage the best of the leading platforms, in this case, AutoCAD (with Map3D extensions) and ArcGIS professional with Esri’s Utility Network. By doing this we our goal has been to minimize the amount of custom development while relying on well-established user-interfaces, data management capabilities and an extensive support and training ecosystem.
Build an open and integrated environment that supports multiple vendors. This not only streamlines design and work management workflows but also serves to support the next generation of application innovations in the communications industry. This includes BIM, mobile computing, digital twins and augmented reality.
We are very excited about the results we have achieved to date. Here are some of the exciting things AUD for Communications has to offer:
CAD and GIS Application-Level Interoperability
AUD for Communications has the familiar AutoCAD interface and the easy-to-use object placement menus of AUD, but it relies heavily on the use of ArcGIS and Utility Network to manage the complexity of telecommunications networks. This tight GIS interoperability is a new, more advanced level of integration over the way AUD is typically used for electric and gas utilities.
The figure below shows a fiber representation in both AUD and ArcGIS Utility Network, leveraging the Esri ArcGIS Utility Network Foundation for Communications. AUD for Communications has out-of-the-box alignment with this foundational data model but can also be configured to support other commonly used telecommunications models. This approach ensures that minimal data transformation is required between design and GIS, ensuring a single source of truth and a common platform for creating and managing digital twin representations of communications assets. An example is shown below.
Critical to communications design and installation workflows is the need to manage fiber connections. The AUD Connection Manager has been developed as a portable application that runs both in AUD, as well as ArcGIS to support the design and operational management of fiber connections. Views of the interfaces in both AUD and ArcGIS professional are shown below.
Robust Digital Twin Support
The model-based design capabilities of AUD provide 3D representations of specific instances of real-world communications objects. They also include relationships with other objects as well as network topology. These models are true digital twins and they are created as a normal part of a communications organization’s design and management workflows. In addition to providing more accurate, properly engineered and detailed designs, the use of digital twins enables an extensive set of applications that leverage this information. These include digital construction (also known as BIM), improved asset management, asset analytics and augmented reality.
The following example shows a 3D representation of a patch panel that has been designed in AUD. The panel was originally modeled in 3D, but is typically represented as 2D data in traditional schematic diagrams. The 3D approach provides a unique way to visualize connections and improve accuracy during the design process.
SBS has chosen to leverage Esri’s capabilities to auto-generate schematic representations, further supporting the concept of a single source of truth, no matter what tool is used to create and manage network information. An example is shown below.
A Highly Flexible and Productive Design Tool
While this post has discussed a few of the new capabilities of AUD for Communications it is important to highlight that AUD remains a highly flexible and productive tool for the design of networked infrastructure. It is not uncommon for users to experience 20% to 40% improvement levels in productivity while still improving design quality and reducing field construction issues. Please look at the SBS blog for examples of posts that highlight these capabilities.
In Conclusion
We hope you are as excited about AUD for Communications as we are. You can learn more by viewing our updatedTelecommunications StoryMap or visiting www.spatialbiz.com or just giving us a call or email. For those of you who will be attending Esri User Conference 2022 in San Diego please visit us at Booth 1906.
