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UK consultant shares how he completes
weeks of hard work in a few hours.
KEYNSHAM, ENGLAND —
As a consultant, Nigel Davies of Evolve
Consultancy delivers solutions to common (and not so common)
problems that slow MicroStation production.
Nigel has over 15 years of extensive experience in the AEC
industry, slaving as CAD Development Manager for several major
engineering consultant firms, and now as a consultant to several
of the world's leading architectural and engineering design
firms. When he is not helping his customers become empowered
and streamlined, Nigel contributes to the quickly blossoming
EatYourCAD.com (a Web resource for CAD managers) as the resident
AEC expert.
Nigel took a break from his busy day to tell us how he uses
Axiom utilities such as RefManager to eliminate the wasted
time and effort of his clients.
MicroStation Today: Please
give a short background of your CAD history.
Nigel: I started working in building design in 1989 with a
design-build firm as a structural technician, originally on
a Unix system. I moved on to Buro Happold in 1991 to set up
their new CAD system, which was then on Macs. I stayed there
nearly nine years. I started out as a structural technician,
but ended up managing the CAD systems full time. I joined
whitbybird in 1999 and began their migration to 3D-based operations.
I left to form a consultancy team in 2003 and I now offer
CAD management and BIM (building information modeling) migration
services to the architectural and structural community in
the United Kingdom. I have assisted and worked with BDP, Bentley
Systems, Feilden Clegg Bradley, Foster and Partners, KPF,
Richard Rogers Partnership, Sheppard Robson, whitbybird and
many others.
MST: What is your title?
What are your daily duties?
Nigel: Principal. CAD Manager. CAD Consultant. Daily duties?
Way too many to list. I do what people need me to do, from
business strategies, systems management, standards design,
procedure and process coordination, implementations, roll-outs,
3D modeling, advice, recommendations, support, training...
MST: How do Axiom tools help you in your work?
Nigel: They provide efficiencies that simply aren't always
possible to achieve otherwise. You can often come up against
problems that are very labor-intensive to solve, just because
of the many different ways a CAD file can be set up. More
often than not, Axiom has a tool that is designed for exactly
those kinds of situations. It's not that you couldn't do it
with MicroStation alone, but it would take very considerably
longer.
There's a great example I'm currently working on: A proactive
structural engineering firm, Clarke Nicholls and Marcel, is
going through a major reconfiguration of systems and procedures
to streamline their efficiency and service offering. As part
of that, the project servers are being reorganized and a series
of standards are being introduced to help create, manage and
track project data. As part of the introduction of a standard
file naming convention, they decided that the superceded or
unnecessary files should be archived and moved to a new mapped
drive.
The implications to the reference file attachments are immense;
potentially we could be faced with every drawing losing every
reference. While the careful configuration of PCFs (or Project
Configuration Files, text files that contain the settings
and variables for a project) can solve pathing, the problem
of file renaming and archived references still remains. Axiom's
RefManager seemed the only solution that could deliver
both a simple method of reattaching the renamed files and
stripping out unwanted attachments at the same time.
MST: How much time and money would you say Axiom
tools have saved you?
Nigel: That is very difficult to measure accurately, but if
you consider that the manual task of reattaching a renamed
reference file could take somewhere around 30 seconds [for
each file] and RefManager can complete numerous files
in that time, it's not too hard to quantify the efficiency
gain. Not only that, but RefManager can be left to
get on with the job while paid staff carry on with their design
work so there's very little overhead cost. If a typical project
has anywhere from 200 to 500 files and you use RefManager
to complete the reattaching, then after being used on only
one project RefManager has paid for itself.
On whitbybird's BBC Redevelopment project, where the client's
CAD standards were changed two or three times to enable closer
collaboration between the design team and contractor, Axiom's
solutions paid for themselves many, many times over. Over
2000 files were renamed and reattached within a matter of
hours rather than weeks — twice.
MST: What is your favorite TV show?
Nigel: As a 30-something bloke growing up in the United Kingdom,
the show that I watched religiously nearly every Saturday
evening through my formative years has to be "Dr. Who".
There's something about cowering behind a sofa as some upside-down
dustbins glide onto the TV shouting "Exterminate, exterminate!"
That has left a resounding impression. Great show. Typically
British.
MST: If you could have a conversation with anyone,
living or deceased, who would it be? What would you talk about?
Nigel: Too obvious to say some great historical figure, musician,
author or filmmaker, so I'd have to say my grandparents. I'd
tell them how well their great-grandchildren are doing and
how they would have loved to have met them.
MST: What would be the first thing you would do if you
won £10 million in the lottery?
Nigel: Delete the e-mail and update my virus protection software.
MST: Thank you, Nigel.
Nigel: Thank you!
Call now!
For more information on Title
Block Manager contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant
today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 9614 or e-mail 9614@AxiomInt.com.
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