Schneider Electric, a French multinational company that deals with digital automation and energy management, took to New Orleans to announce Advanced Electrical Design, a plug-in for Autodesk Revit. There at Autodesk University, the world’s biggest gathering of CAD users, building electrical system designers and engineers could see how to get an accurate picture of a building needs during the building’s early planning.
Autodesk, Bentley Systems, and more recently Graphisoft, all seek to make their diversify from their design applications into BIM platforms and are including as many aspects of AEC as they can muster. Initially competent with design, these CAD companies have added applications for MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing) systems and structural design and simulation. Schneider Electric seems to offer Autodesk an electrical system design and simulation application for its BIM platform.
The electrical design tools are perfect for new and renewable energy sources, claims Schneider Electric in its press release.
“Our alliance leverages Schneider Electric’s global engineering and sustainability expertise to offer Advanced Electrical Design for Autodesk Revit, enabling electrical engineers to play a leading role in designing high performance buildings for Electricity 4.0 in the new energy landscape,” said Daniel Stonecipher, VP, Chief Product Officer eCAD at Schneider Electric.
The electrical plug-in allows electrical engineers to:
- Lay out power sources, equipment and loads of a buildings electrical system using a drag and drop smart diagrams that are capable of calculations.
- Analyze demand loads of electrical system and subsystem. The plug-in bases calculations on local codes.
- Optimize systems to ensure equipment is sized properly and will meet demand loads.
- Generate reports like load letters or cable schedules with calculations done automatically.
Electrical systems are routinely installed after back-of-the-envelope calculations and rules of thumb. They rely greatly on similarity and familiarity with previous projects. Could it handle the load? Were there malfunctions? And of increasing concern given supply chain issue, are the components available? To ensure there are no hiccups, systems are routinely overspecified by electrical designers – leaving owners and operators to foot the bill for oversized systems that are more expensive to buy, house and maintain.
Having a system that can check itself before it is bought and installed, saving the industry from chronic overspecification should be gold, right?
“The advanced BIM-based electrical design solution allows electrical engineers to boost project efficiency by getting a head start on planning and load analysis before a physical model is even provided,” states the Schneider press release. “Customers can then utilize that same data during project design and analysis, saving time, reducing errors and lessening redundancies.”
Honestly, with all of Autodesk’s calls for digitalization of the AEC industry and digital twins, it’s hard to believe it has taken until now for to create Advanced Electrical Design for Revit. We also wonder why Autodesk had to reach across the world to find Schneider Electric. Isn’t AEC always a very local operation, totally dependent on local regulations, convention, preferences, etc. We wonder if the electrical outlets in the Schneider Electric library will fit American plugs.
Perhaps sensing a parochial attitude by contractors, Schneider offers testimonial from April Kane, an electrical designer who works for Gresham Smith in Nashville, Tennessee. Kane, along with Nichole Boucher from Schneider Electric, ran a session on “Re-circuit the MEP workflow: Analytical Elements and BIM System Modeling,” at Autodesk University about how she led her firm in applying the Revit plug-in to optimize an electrical system using smart electrical schematics and was able to create a conceptual design of the system.
“As an electrical designer, I’m always identifying opportunities that will improve electrical workflows and leverage my time across all phases of a project,” said Kane. “I’m proud to be meaningfully involved in the early stages and creation of the Advanced Electrical Design software for Autodesk Revit.”
About Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric is a publicly traded Fortune Global 500 company with FY2020 revenue of €25.2 billion. The company provides energy management products in medium voltage and grid automation. low voltage and building automation, secure power and cooling applications. The company also provides services in three divisions: Global Field Services, Energy and Sustainability Services, and Smart grid Services.