By Reverend Bethel Chapman, Design Manager, Valero Paulsboro Refinery and Pastor, CornerStone Pentecostal Assembly
PAULSBORO, NEW JERSEY, USA — One afternoon, I was using FileFixer to repair ten MicroStation design files with problems such as “end of file missing”, nested cell corruption and a number of other various problems. I thought to myself — if only I had this tool in my church, what great people we would have in this world.

Reverend Bethel Chapman and Dan Lottes of the Valero Paulsboro Refinery

Just think, when people come to my church with all kinds of problems and hang-ups, just run them through “SoulFixer”. Within seconds their sins would be washed away and the lust problems would disappear. Depression and stress would dissipate. Hate, envy and malice would all turn to love. What a beautiful solution to the problems of mankind.

I then came to my senses and my ten files that had gone through FileFixer were totally repaired and operating perfectly.

My name is Reverend Bethel Chapman and I currently have two jobs. I am currently Design Manager of the Design and Reproduction Department at the Valero Paulsboro Refinery and I am a pastor at the CornerStone Pentecostal Assembly Church, in Williamstown, New Jersey. Since 1985, my job in the church world is to try to fix souls as FileFixer repairs bad design files.

My CAD History
I have been working in the engineering profession since 1968. I became a junior designer for R.W. Booker Consulting Engineers in St. Louis, Missouri while still a junior at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois. In February of 1970, I went to work for Mobil Oil Corporation in Sauget, Illinois in the Design Engineering department. I was later transferred to the Paulsboro, New Jersey refinery. I specialize in designing piping systems, tanks, fractionation systems and generally all facets of mechanical engineering design.

How Axiom tools have been a blessing to us
My Design Lead Supervisor, Dan Lottes, has implemented several tools in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit to eliminate thousands of hours of tedious work and wasted time.
For instance, we recently constructed three new process units here at the refinery. As a result of this new construction, we received 12,000-plus design files from our contractors. Using Global File Changer we were able to select text, delete it, attach a cell library, place a new cell at the correct scale, angle and location and drop the cell, for over 1,000 designs at a time. Using RefManager, we were able to make reports on what design files had what reference files so we could run our batch plotting program. RefManager also detached all the needless reference files from the entire group of design files. Using RefMerge, we were able to automatically merge all reference files attached to each design into the design file itself. Using RenamePlus, we were able to do batch renaming for thousands of design files that did not quite match our file-naming procedure. Using DgnCompare saved us hours of painstaking work when it came time to merge the contractor’s revision with our current revision of the design.

Dan Lottes found that MicroStation Productivity Toolkit was so valuable that he wanted all his designers to have access to its goodies. We purchased a site license last month and now all of our designers have access to all of the great tools contained in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit.

How much money did we save?
The money we saved by using MicroStation Productivity Toolkit was substantial. If we were to project that it would take a minimum of 15 minutes to process one design then we are talking about 3,000 man-hours. We were able to complete the job in less than 500 man-hours. That’s a savings of 2,500 man-hours at a very conservative rate estimate of $50.00 per hour, we were able to save $125,000 dollars. We have continued to use MicroStation Productivity Toolkit with all of its tools and Toolkit has been incorporated into our everyday arsenal of design tools.

Prediction for the future of CAD
Since I began designing in CAD in 1987, there have been great improvements in hardware and software designs. We can model designs in 3D. Rotate, turn, cut sections through the designs, walk through the entire model and do many other things. With the improvements in software, there is no telling where we are going. Nonetheless, it will be an exciting ride.

Thanks!
Thank you for thinking of us at Valero Paulsboro Refinery and thank you so much more for creating such a great, helpful tool as MicroStation Productivity Toolkit.