& Construction
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Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing
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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
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Success Story
Breuer Metal Craftsmen faced a significant challenge when using Autodesk Advance Steel (AS) for specific manufactured aluminum guardrails. Despite having three to four drafters/detailers on the team and performing thousands of hours of work annually, they encountered limitations with the existing guardrail macros in AS. This compelled them to produce their designs in a 2D format.
As a result, generating drawings for 200-feet of linear guardrails could take up to 20 hours, causing delays and additional revisions. To optimize the guardrail workflow and enhance efficiency, the company sought a custom development solution.
Breuer Metal Craftsmen wanted to automate the guardrail process, speed up designing, and obtain NC (numerical control) files for all parts. The goal was to reduce detailing time and streamline the production of aluminum guardrails within Advance Steel.
In response to these challenges, Breuer Metal Craftsmen asked the Applied Software, Graitec Group team to step in and help find a solution. That solution involved GRAITEC PowerPack for Advance Steel. This powerful tool offered an array of features that significantly improved the Breuer Metal Craftsmen workflow and accelerated the design process.
Realizing the unique nature of the company’s requirements for custom rails, the Applied Software, Graitec Group team recognized the importance of tailored products. The result was an efficient and automated process that streamlined the design and production of aluminum guardrails, drastically reducing detailing time.
With the power of PowerPack for Advance Steel, Breuer Metal Craftsmen achieved its goals of optimization, precision and seamless workflows, empowering the company to exceed expectations and unlocking the full potential of its metal fabrication.
As Ben Breuer, company estimator/sales, put it, “We have crushed the number of hours spent detailing.”
Through the strategic partnership with Applied Software, Graitec Group, Breuer Metal Craftsmen achieved remarkable business outcomes. By implementing PowerPack for Advance Steel, the company streamlined its design process, automated workflows, and saved significant time and costs. This powerful software solidified the position of Breuer Metal Craftsmen as an industry leader, propelling the company towards continued success in metal fabrication.
The partnership with Applied Software, Graitec Group proved to be a game changer for Breuer Metal Craftsmen. With the implementation of PowerPack for Advance Steel, the company successfully overcame its challenges, optimized workflows, and achieved exceptional efficiency gains. The seamless integration of technology and craftsmanship elevated the company’s metal fabrication capabilities, enabling it to deliver high quality products, while reducing production time and costs.
Project summary
Duration & delivery
Autodesk solutions
Services provided
Customer industry
Productivity Tracking with Assemble
Construction is a difficult game,” Hunt said. “There are a lot of things that make our job difficult. Working with our own data shouldn’t be one of them.” Dee Cramer has become one of the largest heating, ventilating, and air conditioning companies in the country. With productivity tracking in mind, what the company really needed was a live feed from the project’s Autodesk Revit model. If a user could change the status of the model’s components to live feed, Hunt knew the company could track the workflow, including hours, margin and profitability. Hunt said another motivation for making a change came from realizing the industry is moving toward designers being more willing to share their design content in native Revit with contractors before projects are awarded – in the pre-bid stage.
Progressing Forward with Vault
The company’s owner is a proponent of using up-to-date software to keep the company progressing forward and found that the Autodesk trend toward doing that aligned better with Sigma Thermal goals, particularly in the use of Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk AutoCAD Electrical, AutoCAD P&ID, and Autodesk Inventor. Until 2016, Sigma Thermal was using Synergis Adept. Users found that the Autodesk Inventor integration was slow when using Adept, especially checking larger drawings in and out. Efficiency was suffering. In addition, because Sigma Thermal is ISO9000 certified, everyone in the company – not just IT personnel, designers and engineering – needed access to project files, corporate information, procedures and the employee handbook.
Revit Implementation to Stay Competitive
A few years ago, Limbach leadership began seeing an increasing demand for Revit-only projects on the East Coast of the US and the Midwest. National VDC Manager Mark Lamberson became aware of customer comments like, "Why aren’t you in Revit yet?" “We were a leading firm,” he said, “but were not the preferred company because of something as simple as that in some instances.” That spawned the decision to support the switch to Autodesk Revit and create a team to implement it. “We had to do it.” People with 30 years of AutoCAD experience had to completely change the way they did things. The company took the transition slowly, with some branches transitioning earlier than others. Lamberson monitored how groups were doing in their adoption. When Limbach began its Revit implementation, it was involved in mega-projects around the country, so the company wasn’t able to adopt Revit completely on a massive project. Implementation began in bits and pieces, and large jobs lagged behind.
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