DESIGN SOFTWARE SELECTION

When choosing the right electrical design software to use for your project the right choice can yield enormous benefits in efficiency, such benefits multiplying the larger the building.  Here is an example where the power of automation in design can be leveraged to create significant productivity gains.  Time spent is not necessarily directly proportional to the project size.  This can be argued with any software application but some will produce far better results than others.  Those that offer only enhancements to what amounts to still completely manual design will limit production to human speed and the time for the job, meaning time for a larger job varies basically proportional to the size of the job.  On the other hand, software that offers automation can multiply the productivity results many fold and reap huge rewards for the designer and contractors.

AUTOMATION VASTLY MULTIPLIES DESIGN PRODUCTIVITY

As an example we recently tested the capability of our software on a 725,000 sq. ft. plant building.   In that job, we placed approximately 7,000 light fixtures including zonal cavity lighting calculations for over 450 rooms and placed receptacles in all rooms.  We completely circuited the project, populated 195 electrical panels and created a single line & panel schedules completely automatically with all load calculations done including selection of feeders, selection of protection, calculation of fault levels for each panel, indication of minimum IC handling for all protection, and accommodation throughout for voltage drop.  This entire process once the drawings were set up took only hours.  Estimating that there were approximately 4000 circuits to connect doing this manually would have taken around 200 hours ( a conservative estimate) just for the circuiting let alone filling in schedules, creating single line diagrams and doing load and fault level calculations.  Taking these tasks into account would likely would have doubled that time for the manual circuiting and single line process.

Looking at the project as a whole, thus including device placement, circuiting, and generation of all schedules and floor plans, using normal ACAD tools this would have easily taken over 40 to 50 man weeks.  We achieved this result in less than two man weeks including all drawing set up, layouts and calculations & creation of all client deliverables.  An astounding accomplishment when one considers what was done in this compressed time frame.  The work completed in the aforementioned time included everything already mentioned plus the drawing of multi-circuit home runs and device to device interconnections for branch circuit wiring & creation of a complete bill of materials that included branch circuit wiring, feeders, all devices, and panel+protection summaries with required IC levels noted.

BE A LEADER NOT A FOLLOWER

Seek out and find the right tools for the job, do your research and use your time effectively because your competitors are doing the same thing.

This strategy can get your foot in the door with new clients when they understand what you can do for them, and it will make your life easier with contractors by reducing the number of design errors on your project regardless of size.  Automation effectively applied can change your life, release a great deal of repetitive drudgery and at the same time improve quality.

DraftLogic Electrical offers patented automation tools that are not offered anywhere else.  Possible productivity gains are astounding and have been proven, time and time again and we have carefully measured and documented the results in a white paper available on our website at www.draftlogic.com.

Check it out and change the way you do things.

Gerry Stebnicki, P. Eng, Bsc. Electrical
President
DraftLogic

Regards,
Dean Whitford
Chief Operating Officer
www.draftlogic.com

BIM (building information modeling) is the new buzzword for building document production. Creating a 3D model is an exciting new way to represent the building element electronically and allows the designers to fly around and through the 3D images to see how all major components fit together. The advantages over previous 2D technology is the ability to do coordination with all building systems and a compelling way to show clients the spatial relationships that they may not have clearly understood without the benefit of this tool. There is value to the BIM approach but it does not come without a cost. Time must be devoted to creating both the base data and the rendered images, thus there is a balance to be struck between how much time is spent and how far to carry the details.

The Tools

There are many software programs available to create 3D imagery such as Revit and Sketchup.  Most can be compiled into an integrated image with 3^rd party software. Programs designed for this purpose are generally easy to use but create large files and have some practical challenges that will limit the level of detail that is created. Most 3D models will include the architectural base and major elements of structural, mechanical and electrical systems that are of sufficient size or location critical to have relevance to the final model. In most cases smaller system components are not shown because as the size of a component is diminished the number of it generally increases as systems branch to the end points. Smaller components are usually not important to the 3D coordination model as they usually can be easily routed on site to fit in spaces available.

How far do you go in 3D?

The answer is easy: only go as far as you need to! Communicate with your client to find out what they really need. In electrical drafting, do you need to show anything beyond the big stuff, distribution boards, cable tray, buss duct, 4” conduits,etc?  Not really.  Even for the components you are interested in, you only need to show those in congested areas so that can cut down your work considerably. In some cases you may want to show some detail like wall plugs, switches etc in typical rooms for coordination but that should be about it.

I hate to break the news but showing ¾” conduits is of little value in the vast majority of cases because it is unlikely installing this size of component will be a problem so nobody cares about modeling to that level in a building. Most firms stop at that point and create the working drawings in their building electrical design production software environment which is usually 2D and much more efficient than working in 3D.

Benefits of 2D

As speedily as possible producing easily managed information that is still perfectly accurate and sufficiently detailed is the primary goal of electrical design firms. In creating DraftLogic Electrical we had that goal clearly in our sights, increasing designer productivity by a minimum of 200% and up to 1300%.

We have included extra information in the 2D model to enable DraftLogic Electrical to create an accurate bill of materials.  Getting to your desired documentation destination in a fraction of the time that would be demanded by working in a 3D environment is extremely beneficial when it comes to creating construction documentation.

Chart your course for efficiency

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to do everything with the wrong tools. Use good 3D software to do your modeling and use good building electrical production software to do the rest. A skilled carpenter does not use only one saw for all woodwork, he will have a variety of tools each best suited for a specific task–use software the same way. Yes, you can force results using the wrong tools but why bother to put yourself through that pain?

Gerry Stebnicki P. Eng Bsc. Electrical

President

DraftLogic