AVEVA & Tech Soft 3D

The Challenge

AVEVA is a global leader in industrial software, helping to drive digital transformation for enterprises with complex operational processes. As part of its mission, the company helps customers in industries ranging from power & utilities to oil & gas and shipbuilding with the design and engineering, operation, and optimization of their plants and other large assets.

“Whether we’re talking about a process plant for an energy company or a brand-new container ship, these are very large, complex, and expensive assets,” said Brian Hughes, Senior Portfolio Manager, AVEVA. “The companies who are building these assets expect them to run for many, many years, so lot of care needs to be put into their initial design as well as their ongoing operation.”

AVEVA’s 3D design solution, AVEVA E3D Design, has long helped customers with the design of these assets. The product provides a common model that enables all the designers and different disciplines to seamlessly work together on the project and to identify and resolve clashes before anything is built. The product also allows for integration of as-built laser scan data for modernization projects or refurbishments, eliminating construction rework.

Increasingly, customers wanted to bring even more types of information into the AVEVA E3D Design environment and to leverage the model beyond the design phase.

“There's a lot more use being made of the model in recent years,” explained Hughes. “People have realized that the engineering data created during the design phase is a useful resource that can be used to create a digital twin and optimize the performance of the asset during the operations phase.”

Hughes continued, “Due to that shift change, our customers wanted us to let them bring together more types of data from different systems and vendors to create a more complete model.”

While AVEVA offered support for approximately half a dozen Computer Aided Design (CAD) formats within AVEVA E3D Design, the company knew that it needed to step up its product capabilities to better meet the needs of the market.

“Customers wanted to see more information and a higher level of detail than we had traditionally offered in the AVEVA E3D Design model – but we didn't have the capacity in-house to add huge numbers of additional formats,” said Hughes. “So we had to find another way to make that happen.”

More Data Creates a More Powerful Solution for Customers

HOOPS Exchange was the ideal solution for AVEVA. The leading CAD translation software development kit, HOOPS Exchange delivers access to over 30 CAD file formats through a single interface. Supported formats include CATIA, SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo, NX, Solid Edge, and many more.

“HOOPS Exchange has been a fantastic way to increase the number of formats we support, and the results are something that we just wouldn't have been able to achieve in a timely manner with our own development resources,” said Hughes. “Adding support for new formats and keeping up to date with the latest version of formats was something we really struggled to do at scale before. Handing off this responsibility to Tech Soft 3D’s allows us to really focus our development efforts.”

Using HOOPS Exchange, AVEVA introduces a powerful Multicad Import feature to AVEVA E3D Design that lets customers easily bring in data from multiple sources and enrich the common data model. It provides the foundation for a sophisticated digital twin that customers can take advantage of during the lifecycle of the asset.

“We’ve instantly been able to deliver a better solution that delivers more value to our customers by letting them create a more comprehensive data model,” said Hughes. “That’s not just our opinion, either. The new functionality within AVEVA E3D Design has been really well received by our customers.”

In better serving their customers, AVEVA feels they’ve gained a powerful competitive edge for their flagship product.

“The market told us they needed access to more data, and we were able to address that by using some of the best software out on the market today,” said Hughes. “HOOPS Exchange has been a fabulous tool for us.”

Industry:

Power & Utilities, Chemicals, Shipbuilding, Energy, Mining

Challenge:

Customers creating massive, complex assets need to bring together multiple types of data to support initial design and creation of a robust digital twin - Existing version of product only provided support for half a dozen CAD formats - Limited in-house development resources constrained ability to add support for new formats

Solutions:

HOOPS Exchange SDK includes all the integration tools needed to easily build robust CAD data translation into an application, with support for all major CAD and 3D formats

Results:

Quickly develop a Multicad Import feature that delivers a five-fold increase in number of CAD formats customers can bring into the product and work with - Create a richer, more detailed data model that provides the foundation for a digital twin that can help customers optimize performance of expensive assets over time - Rapidly respond to customer needs around functionality, ensuring product maintains competitive market position