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Review

A Dam good solution!

From CAD User AEC Magazine Vol 18 No 03 - MARCH/APRIL 2005

The Bureau of Reclamation uses Cyco’s AutoManager Meridian to keep the Grand Coulee Dam’s turbines working.

I am always fascinated by the terminology used to describe the workings of large organisations, and none gives me more pleasure than the Bureau of Reclamation. In the UK, the term ‘reclamation’ has a slightly seedy tone, that, whilst describing a wholly worthwhile endeavour, conveys an atmosphere of rooting around in a nation’s detritus to salvage anything that can be used again. In the United States it has a much grander meaning – harnessing the natural resources of the land for the benefit of all – including the indigenous wildlife.

Hence the grandiose title of The Bureau of Reclamation, the largest wholesale water supplier and the second largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States, with operations and facilities in 17 of the Western States, whose facilities not only provide substantial water management and flood control, but serve to develop the same facilities for recreation, fishing and other wildlife benefits.

The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington (the State, not the capital) is one of the Bureaus largest infrastructure projects. Located on the main stem of the Columbia River about 90 miles west of Spokane, Washington, the barricade is 5,223 feet long, 550 feet high and contains 11,975,500 cubic yards of concrete.

To keep this enormous amount of concrete, powerlines, hydro systems, pumps and circuit breakers in top shape, the dam's engineering and maintenance groups are in charge of conducting continuous maintenance on the dam and its related power infrastructure. More than 300 people from different disciplines are involved, including engineering, maintenance and administration.

A dedicated data management solution was required to handle the thousands of drawings and documents that had accumulated throughout the development of the project, and, accordingly, AutoManager Meridian, developed by Cyco Software, a leading provider of Engineering Data Management (EDM) solutions, was chosen by the Bureau of Reclamation, to manage the engineering data and design documentation at the hydro-power facility.

The CAD and Engineering department at the Grand Coulee Dam has successfully implemented Cyco AutoManager Meridian to keep more than 200,000 drawings that outline the dam under tight control. Clark Perman, CAD Manager, explains how Cyco AutoManager Meridian is saving the engineers time. "Right now, we have 45,000 records in Cyco AutoManager Meridian. We have about 10,000 CAD drawings in there and the rest are scanned images," he says. "It is much nicer to have the system do the searching for you than to go through a bunch of cards."

"Cyco AutoManager Meridian allows us to have up to date drawings at our fingertips no matter where we are on the project," he says.

DataCore Technology, an EDM consultant that specializes in the asset management needs of utilities around the country, helped the Bureau of Reclamation roll out and implement Cyco AutoManager Meridian. "DataCore has been terrific in helping to implement the system and supporting us along the way," says Perman. "The fact they're located remotely has never made any difference to the quality of their support. They've been timely, thorough and available."

Besides Cyco AutoManager Meridian's versatile searching tools, Perman is very satisfied with the product's workflow and Work Area features that facilitate communications between different disciplines. Work Areas are pre-defined stages in a workflow with a unique set of revision, security and editing settings.

"We have set up workflow in such a way that when an engineer checks out a drawing and locks it in his [Work Area] he can make red and green changes to that drawing. What the electrician needs to take out is added in green and what needs to be added is in red," explains Perman.

Other features Perman likes are Cyco AutoManager Meridian's convenient file structure that allows people to create drawing hierarchies, very easily, to categorize drawings. He also mentions the title block-database synchronization as a great time-saver for his department. "I like how easy it is to change the items on the index cards and link the title block information to the drawings. The synchronization is very nice."

Perman concludes that Cyco AutoManager Meridian has made a significant impact on the engineering's department daily operations. "Before we had data management, people had to come to our office to get the drawings. Taking into account that our project spreads 15 miles across, you can imagine how much time was wasted and how much we're saving now."

AutoManager Meridian
Cyco Software provides Engineering Data Management (EDM) and Application Integration solutions for multiple vertical industries, including manufacturing, energy, government, pharmaceutical, retail and telecommunications, and has almost two decades of industry experience with more than 16,000 clients and over 275,000 users in 50+ countries worldwide.
The company supplies and supports two leading data and project management solutions, AutoManager Meridian and AutoManager Teamwork.

AutoManager Meridian is used extensively by many mechanical and civil engineering companies, and provides its customers with a total solution, capable of integrating data from leading CAD suppliers, such as Autodesk, Bentley, Archibus, SolidWorks and MRO Software.
Basically, the software is used to provide everybody in an organisation with easy access to all of their documents, at any time, and from anywhere, whether they are in the office, or out on the road. Based on client/server architecture, Meridian is totally scaleable and can be used in a single department, or throughout the whole organisation. Document management is simple, with meridian integrated within Microsoft Windows NT, besides most major CAD applications and other MS Windows compliant software. Cyco also ensures that compatibility is maintained with the latest revisions of such software. Documents are stored within a secure ‘vault’ system.
Principal features of the software include automatic bi-directional block synchronisation with CAD drawings, with title block information being incorporated within index information in the Meridian Database, so that it can be used as search criteria. The document viewers can handle more than 250 file types besides DWG and all MS Office formats.
Besides handling document revisions – automatically generated to eliminate misuse and confusion, and providing the usual redlining tools for annotating documents, users can visually compare CAD Drawings to see what changes have been made between revisions – depicting additions and cancellations with different colours. AutoManager Meridian also includes a History mode, so that users can go back in time to inspect all versions of a document.
Documents created with internal links such as AutoCAD ex-refs, or MS Office documents linked with OLE can also be managed and tracked with AutoManager Meridian.
User can also scan documents directly into AM Meridian, using the “Scan” or “Batch Scan” options from the FILE menu, so that both raster and vector formats can be managed as individual document types and put into the right location automatically. Hybrid files composed by both vector and raster format, are handled using a CadOverlay file.
Distribution and management of documents gets a company nowhere, unless it is accompanied by some degree of control, and AM Meridian provides a framework that enables departmental managers to give team members ‘to do’ lists, stating responsibilities and deadlines, enhancing the contribution of individuals as well as departments. Workflows can also be customised to suit independent projects, allowing project managers to keep track of progress with a single click. For complex projects, sub-work areas can be set up to create a Multi-Dimensional Workflow environment – enabling approvals to be handled more quickly using batch processing, rather than single drawing submission.
Overall management of the project depends on efficient reporting and instant accessability to data. This is accomplished through simple report generation – at a single click – and web-access, which comes with maximum security protection.
www.cyco.com

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