Paul..
Pardon me if I am being prudent in correcting you..
PDMS was never based on microstation. Aveva(Former Cadcentre) had there own inbuilt cad engine for PDMS which is presently named as Vantage PDMS. And the new version of PDMS is 100% compatible with It's older file format.
PDS which is an Intergraph product has Microstation as cad engine and Oracle as the database management system. This product is available in the market now by the name of PDS only..
However Intergraph has come up with another product which is called Smart Plant 3D . This package is not based on Microsation and it is now having it's own Cad engine. This product is still in it's infancy and I suppose the customer release is not yet out.
Both this software as such does not have any dependence on autocad. However the drawings extracted from both the software can be coverted in DXF/DWG format which is Autocad compatible..
I completely agree with Vornel that if administered properly both this software can do wonders in Plant Design Engineering..and undoubtedly PDMS is more user friendly and easy to customize.
Regarding pricing PDS stands on top whereas CAdpipe may be towards the tail end..
Any further specific queries are most welcome..
Regards
SOma
Paul Bowers <pbowers@pipingdesign.com> wrote: Some clarification of the current 3D piping design software business, please correct any mistakes that I might have made (it's difficult to keep track these days) and some of this is just my opinion:
Bentley's MicroStation is the CAD software that PDS and PDMS are based on. COADE's CADWorx, Bentley's AutoPlant (which was purchased from Rebis), AEC Design's CADPIPE and a few other smaller players are all based on AutoCAD.
Both PDS and PDMS have "changed names" to Intergraph's SmartPlant 3D and
Aveva's Vantage Plant Design respectively. As far as I can tell, both SmartPlant 3D and Vantage Plant Design no longer use MicroStation as their CAD engine and have gone with a proprietary solution.
Intergraph seems to have a pile of cash (or used to) from a settlement with Intel regarding chip design legal issues.
Also, in my understanding, the successors to PDS and PDMS (SmartPlant 3D and Vantage Plant Design) will be/are not compatible with older file formats.
MicroStation offering an AutoCAD-based 3D piping program (ex-Rebis stuff) as well as their own seems a bit "off", since they are a direct competitor to Autodesk and some say that support from Autodesk for the ACAD-based, ex-Rebis code will just go away.
CADWorx is counting on this to happen, as they are probably the largest AutoCAD-based 3D piping software and have historical links back to the highly-respected CAESAR stress analysis package as well as official Autodesk support. They also claim that all their support people are professional engineers that are experienced with process piping and plant design.
I don't know where CADPIPE fits into this hypothetical scenario.
One thing that I find annoying about some of these programs is that many of them do not indicate pricing on their websites.
At least these days we are no longer locked-in to specific hardware.
Finally, I'm including a partial quote from the latest upfront.ezine:
"At the same time, creating artificial boundaries due to proprietary representations is probably more of an impediment to an industry. Imagine a part catalog that couldn't establish standard characteristics of common components just because the different vendors didn't want their products to be readily compared against similar products. From a consumers' (in this case, the designer's) perspective, that just doesn't make any sense."
Paul
vornel wrote:
> Dear OMID,
>
> I agree, as an ex-user of both packages I would say that PDMS has
> the edge in user friendliness and openness but both perform
> exceptionally well if administered and set up properly AND both
> payback well when projects are large. But I do have a small
> correction to what you wrote...
>
> ...CADWorx is from COADE www.coade.com, CADPIPE is from AEC Design
> Group www.cadpipe.com and AutoPLANT is now from Bentley
> www.bentley.com
>
> Eko - this is the nature of the beast - these system were never
> designed to be simple or easy - they were (are) designed to be
> comprehensive.
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Thu Jan 13 03:42:00 2005
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