An A list alliance

In what in every sense could be said to be an A-list alliance, the process engineering IT company Aveva (formerly Cadcentre) has teamed up with the leading engineering drafting company Autodesk in a strategic alliance to provide extended design software solutions to the process industries.

The alliance integrates Aveva's Vantage plant design management system (PDMS) with AutoCAD 2004, Autodesk's flagship 2D drafting, detailing and design tool. Users of the 3D PDMS system will now have access to an AutoCAD-based drafting interface for editing post-production drawings in an AutoCAD environment.

According to Aveva, AutoCAD is used by over 70 per cent of its PDMS user base. It sees the integration of the leading modelling, data and documentation technologies from the process and energy sectors as a benefit to PDMS users by accelerating the creation, manipulation and delivery of documentation for plants designed with PDMS.

Richard Longdon, Aveva's ceo, says the alliance 'is a monumental event for the process plant engineering IT industry as a whole. As the leaders in data-centric plant design technology, we are extremely excited about an alliance with the leaders in drawing-centric design technology.'

For Autodesk, the company's Platform Technology Division's v-p John Sanders says: 'Autodesk is committed to rounding out its solution offerings in the process and energy industries. Together with Aveva, we are able to expand our reach, offering a complete design solution for medium and large process plant engineering and distributed design teams who are working on complex projects.'

A user's perspective comes from Steve Trench, manager of engineering for AMEC's downstream business: 'Bringing together the PDMS 3D design system and AutoCAD design software will help us to improve the quality of our product deliverables for our clients, through increased productivity and flexibility.'

Current plans are to initially release PDMS and the enhanced AutoCAD integration on the PDMS version 11 platform, with first releases of 'PDMS with intelligent AutoCAD enhanced deliverables' expected later in the year.