Bruce Jenkins and I have been on the road this past week chasing down the news. In the weeks to come we’ll have some juicy case studies on how laser scanning was successfully used on an offshore platform revamp, a rail tunnel
profiling project in Europe, and for fabrication purposes to refit a very well known ship. We’ve also got an update on imaging subsurface conditions using ground penetrating radar systems – stay tuned.
Last week at ISEIT 2004 in Houston, AVEVA provided some updates on its plans to support point cloud data. The company announced technology alliances with software provider BitWyse Solutions and
services provider Quantapoint. According to John Sanins, head of Plant Design at AVEVA, customers can expect to see a prototype near the end of January 2005 following the release of PDMS Version 11.6 and then a production release in mid-year.
Earlier this year at SPAR 2004, AVEVA announced alliances with laser scanning solution providers Leica Geosystems HDS and Trimble. Many PDMS customers we have spoken with have been pressing for support for point cloud data in both design and design review environments; AVEVA’s annopuncement is good news for them. Today’s work processes to use point cloud data with PDMS are a little awkward and
typically involve data excursions into and out of Bentley’s MicroStation using ExPLANT-I and ImPLANT-I routines. The ability to work with point cloud data in native PDMS and DesignReview should be well received by AVEVA customers, particularly those customers executing revamp projects.
Support of point cloud data is part of a broader initiative at AVEVA to allow its customers to use CAD geometry from external applications such as AutoCAD, CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER and others. Engineering managers we speak to often lament the lack of timely integration of equipment data with today’s plant design systems.
