AVEVA continues to drive efficiency

AVEVA’s flagship design solution brings new levels of efficiency in asset upgrades

At its launch, AVEVA Everything3D™ (AVEVA E3D™) delivered a major advance in productivity and capability in 3D design, and it created the long-sought catalyst for Engineering and Plant Design for Lean Construction. But its development continues rapidly and the release of AVEVA E3D 2.1 brings new technology that enables projects to be delivered faster, more cost effectively and more reliably than ever before.

In a market in which brownfield projects are becoming increasingly important, being able to deliver rapid, efficient and low-risk revamps and upgrades offers EPCs a significant competitive advantage. The latest version of AVEVA E3D has a number of new features that will enable OOs to achieve greater return on investment at less risk, with minimum impact on existing production, and give EPCs a valuable edge when bidding for future projects.

Lean Construction for the brownfield

AVEVA has previously described how its game-changing exploitation of laser scanning technologies can, and should, be built into the workflows at each stage of the asset’s life cycle. These technologies not only enable Lean methodologies during project execution, they also provide powerful capabilities in efficient asset operation and management. This latest update of AVEVA E3D brings improved capabilities that make it easier to apply Lean principles, especially to brownfield projects.

The use of laser scanning for rapid, accurate and detailed site survey is now widely established and AVEVA E3D broke new ground while making laser data directly usable within its 3D design environment. AVEVA E3D 2.1 takes this to the next level by bringing photorealistic HyperBubble™ scan views into the design environment. This new capability enables a designer to walk through a realistic and accurate 3D representation of the scanned site, created by the sophisticated integration of multiple overlapping laser scans.

This capability is not only limited to walk-through, however; the designer can use this hybrid laser/model environment as his or her working space. Teams can perform clash checks, measure objects, and model in the exact same way as in the normal AVEVA E3D modelling environment. This provides the most accurate as-built environment available today for the designer to model in.

Blending the 3D model with the laser scan data gives users an accurate, up-to-date modelling environment.

Design in Context capability

While this is a fantastic step in capability that provides a far better understanding of the asset in question, the truly big breakthrough in this latest update of AVEVA E3D is achieved by the addition of AVEVA’s powerful new Design in Context capability. Now, not only does the designer feel as if they are in the real plant, they can also click on any selected design object to navigate to any of its associated information, whether vendor documents, P&IDs, line lists, or any number of related documents that form the Digital Asset. In many ways, this is even better than being there in person.

The advantages for any project are considerable, but this is especially relevant when working on brownfield revamps where information is often not complete. The ability to access, on demand, the relevant information that is coming from outside the design environment will speed up decision making and remove the possibility of errors early in the design cycle, providing obvious time and cost savings.

Remodelling eliminated

Drawings remain essential project deliverables. On revamp projects, existing parts of the plant often have to be modelled in order to integrate both the as-is and the new design on updated drawings. Where the as-is items will remain unaltered this clearly represents wasted design effort.

Bringing the laser scan data into the drawings removes the need to remodel existing plant layouts, providing considerable savings in man hours.

With AVEVA E3D 2.1, integration of laser and model data in the 3D design environment is also reflected in the drawing environment. Known as ‘Laser in Draw’, this essentially creates hybrid laser and model drawings directly from the definitive 3D environment, incorporating as-is elements alongside the new as-designed. This speeds up the generation of drawings necessary for construction and field crews, and provides these teams with deliverables that have new design elements alongside existing as-built design, in a single document.

Growth opportunity

Capital assets in all segments continue to face increasing cost pressures to ensure the ongoing viability of the facility. But AVEVA technologies continue to provide EPC and owner operator companies with new and innovative means to drive efficiencies into the revamp or modification projects for ageing facilities.

For more information on AVEVA Everything3D please contact your local AVEVA office or visit: www.aveva.com/aveva_everything3D.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/28082015/aveva-everything3d/