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Can small sites save time with add-on
software?
By Ivan Pena, Vice President, Axiom
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| Small and large businesses both
deal wi thheavy time constraints. Surveys show they can
alleviate the burden with the right add-on software. |
In any company — but especially in
small companies — every production minute contributes
to the overall viability of the company. Every dollar spent
must produce significant results in order to justify the expense.
With that said, a profit-conscious CAD manager at a small
company can't afford to pass up innovations that allow his
designers to accomplish their work faster and more efficiently.
But how can he be sure a tool, such as MicroStation Productivity
Toolkit, will increase profits sufficiently to justify
its cost? Can a small company use utility software enough
to justify its cost? I could just tell you "yes",
but then this article would done with and you would just roll
your eyes and stop reading.
So instead, I decided to share with you some data on small
sites using MicroStation Productivity Toolkit. We consider
a site "small" when they have less than 10 MicroStation
users at that site. Other common characteristics of small
sites are: extra attention to every dollar spent, just enough
resources to "do the job" and no time to investigate
new technologies without sacrificing some kind of project
deadline. Having such considerable obstacles, how can "small
siters" ever pull themselves away long enough to check
out cool and helpful utility software?
I am glad I asked myself that question.
When can Toolkit help?
Often, users don't even know they have a problem. Lots of
times, the problems are small annoyances that don't stop production,
but just slow it down. Problems can also manifest themselves
as redundant and time-consuming tasks. Since a production
bump in the road can feel like an earthquake at a small site,
handling these problems swiftly frees up the site's limited
resources considerably. Enter the collection of tools in MicroStation
Productivity Toolkit. Let me throw in some scenarios here.
Quantity Sheets
Here's one we see routinely. A MicroStation user spends 15
minutes re-importing a spreadsheet into his sheet files any
time the quantities in the master spreadsheet change. Not
only that, but he has to import the spreadsheet in two pastes,
as the clipboard can't handle all the data at once. If this
happens twice per week (very common), he is spending roughly
two hours per month handling this. With Microsoft Office
Importer, you only have to import the data into MicroStation
once and whenever there are changes made to the master spreadsheet,
the data is automatically updated in the design file. What's
more, you can import the spreadsheet in just one paste (even
huge spreadsheets). This whole process would take no more
than three minutes, thus saving one hour and 57 minutes per
month on this task alone. Now multiply this by every user
in the shop who has a similar task. When every minute counts,
this is a sizeable amount of time.
Your Design File is Hosed
Here's another one. We have a customer who works at a small
firm that was contracted by a large government agency. On
the Monday of the week the firm's section of the project had
to be submitted, he came to work hoping to be able to get
right to finishing the project. The design file supplied by
the agency was a V7 file and his firm was working in V8. The
problem started when he converted the V7 file to V8 and two-thirds
of the file went missing when it was opened. He almost had
a heart attack, but because he had seen an online demonstration
about FileFixer and MicroStation Productivity Toolkit
all he had to do was ask his boss for the company credit
card. (Most companies can't approve purchases nearly that
quickly.) He was back up and running in less than one hour.
What else can Toolkit
do?
Here is a short list of the many areas in which MicroStation
Productivity Toolkit can come in very handy for a small
team, especially when a deadline is hours away and your resources
are very limited:
- Importing spreadsheets in one paste
and automatically updating the data inside the design file
if the source spreadsheet changes, thus keeping all bills
of materials and quantity sheets always in synch in both
places.
- Fixing "broken" design files
(unopenable or misbehaving), thus eliminating 1) time spent
figuring out why MicroStation is acting weird and 2) the
need to redraw work you have already spent time on.
- Graphically comparing different versions
of a design file, thus eliminating time spent trying to
figure out what changed between revisions.
- Spell-checking and correcting of multiple
design files at once, thus eliminating the mind-numbing
task of spell checking each file, one at a time.
- Jumping back and forth between a master
file and any of its references (keeping the master file
fully visible), thus eliminating the need to use the exchange
command and making reference-file-editing tasks faster.
- Ensuring that all elements placed in
a design file adhere to the project's CAD standard, thus
eliminating the possibility of drawing rejections due to
CAD standard violations.Deleting duplicate and near-duplicate
elements that may have been erroneously created by doing
"one too many fence copies", thus eliminating
extra elements that may ruin your plots or bloat your design
files.
The list could go on, but I think you get the gist of what
I am trying to communicate here.
Post-delivery Value
The initial software costs and immediate man-hour savings
are not the end of the line. You always have to weigh the
"post-deliverable" value of software, which is the
perceived value of your firm producing a deliverable on time,
on budget and error-free. This value is priceless, as a firm's
reputation and perceived quality of work are its most precious
assets.
Call now!
For more information on MicroStation
Productivity Toolkit contact an Axiom MicroStation
Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 9597 or e-mail
9597@AxiomInt.com.
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