Enhancing CAD platform performance with purpose built application; When People Talk, Great Things Happen!
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The last 3 Webinars/Training Videos were posted this morning:
Managing Your Material Marks – Take control of your Material Marks with BUBBLEWorx
ISOGEN – Importing old ISOGEN Styles to the New I-Configure (requires login)
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Thank you
Jeffrey Suffet
ECE Design
Hello,
Are you looking for a way to track pipe support material without touching your isometrics or creating lists in Excel? Are you “touching” the isometrics every time you re-run a line because of the pipe support materials? Do you need to kit your supports for onsite installation?
Over the years, ECE has explored many ways to attack the problem. In SUPPORTWorx, we feel we have found an excellent solution.
ECE performed a technology preview Webinar earlier this year and with the feedback we have developed the first release of SUPPORTWorx including the following features:
Please join us for the following Webinar and allow us to demonstrate how to automatically add pipe support matterial to CADWorx Models
TODAY: May 27, 2015 11:45 am – 12:15 pm
SUPPORTWorx: Automatically Add Pipe Support Parts to CADWorx Models – Final Version Overview
For larger companies that have multiple CAESAR II users, dealing with differences in the user’s settings can be an issue. Each user may have their own set of database settings for expansion joints, load cases, units, materials, and valves/flanges that are specified in the “caesar.cfg” on that user’s machine. What often happens during the course of a project is that User A will change a property for a material type in the CAESAR II file and that property does not exist for User B in their material database. When User B opens the CII File they get a nice error message that looks something like the below:
Basically, CAESAR II recognizes that there’s a difference between User A’s material input and what User B has in their material database, and is asking how to rectify the difference. If we clicked “No” at this point, then we’ve just reverted the material properties back to what User B has in their default database, which may not be what was needed for the project.
The risk for potential issues is very high when a user selects this option and collaboration is seen as a negative.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to avoid these risks and share settings globally across one project.
A lesser known capability introduced in CAESAR II 2014 is to set an “Alternate CAESAR II Distributed Data Path” shown here:
Distributed Data Path is a networked System directory that multiple users can connect to. By default a user’s System directory is located at “C:\ProgramData\Intergraph CAS\CAESAR II\7.00\System”.
Let’s walk through how to set up this option. Before we begin, let’s understand a very important distinction with the caesar.cfg file. There’s a caesar.cfg located in your “System directory”, as well as a caesar.cfg located in your current “data directory”. When you first open up CAESAR II, the large CONFIGURE button on the Ribbon will allow you to modify attributes for both the System and Data Directory *.cfg files. The System Data Directory is the one we want to move to the network.
If I were to go to my Piping Input Screen, and then choose configure, I’m only modifying configuration settings for the current data directory. This means that the following steps that we are about to take to modify the caesar.cfg will need to be done from the main screen, not the piping input screen.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s what you need to do to set up a Networked Directory for your CAESAR II users:
On User B’s computer:
Repeat these steps for any other computer you wish to connect to this same location.
Some closing remarks on the behavior of CAESAR II in terms of project management. If you go to Tools > Open System Folder, this will open up the Networked system directory that you have created. No longer does this function send you to your local System directory while the Alternative Distributed Data Directory has been set.
Now that you can edit a material database that is shared with multiple users, there is an important final step to take when adding or modifying materials. The *.UMD file can be modified in CAESAR II to add new materials by accessing the Materials icon on the Home tab. To learn how to do this, reference my earlier blog posts on the subject.
After you click “Save Material,” close the dialog, and then Close out CAESAR II entirely. Only then will a new UMAT1_NET.UMD file get generated with these new material properties. If you do not take this step and close out of the program, other users will not receive the updated attributes you have inserted into the material database.
Now that a caesar.cfg file exists that can be pinged by multiple users, here’s a quick tip on how to record changes that you’ve made to the caesar.cfg as you develop a baseline for attributes for a project. The way that CAESAR II “saves” a new configuration file, is by opening it up and overwriting 97 rows of data to the file “caesar.cfg”. If you place any data on the 98th row, you can effectively add comments into the *.cfg file to help document your project.
Open up the caesar.cfg file located in your …\C2_Network_LOC\System directory. Scroll down to the bottom of the .cfg itself.
On the 98th row, you can add in your own comments to this file. For example, the steps involved to create this post have been added as follows. Each time you save changes to the *.cfg, these changes will not be overwritten.
Thank you,
George Montgomery, EIT
Analysis Application Engineer
ECE Design
www.ecedesign.com
www.cadworxblog.com
For Support: support@ecedesign.com
The CAESAR II 2014 Service Pack 2 is now available for download from Intergraph’s Customer Smart System System. Release notes can be found here.
To access the CAESAR II 2014 Service Pack 2:
For Sales or Support please contact us with any questions. When People Talk, Great Things Happen!
Thank you
Jeffrey Suffet
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