East Coast Cad Cam

I hope you all are having a great summer at work and with your families.

Here at EastCoast CAD/CAM, we've been busy building Fabrication for AutoCAD MEP. This past Monday we released Beta 2 of the product to 36 Beta testers in North America and the United Kingdom. Our development focus is to continue adding content and to incorporate our beta tester's experiences and comments back into the product. All of our work is driving towards a release in the September timeframe. We're looking forward to releasing the new software. This fall, we're also expecting to release an important update to our DuctMaker CAM tool that will include a number of high priority customer requests (more about DuctMaker in our next newsletter.)

One final note, is that internally and over the past 6 weeks, EastCoast's technical support team has been working diligently to improve our customer service. Anyone, recently, calling in with a software or hardware problem should have seen and experienced our new approach to service. Our goal is to make our support service the most dependable and helpful in the industry. Don't hesitate to share any comments with me about our technical services.

During the month of August, we plan on presenting both duct and piping demos of our new software. If you're interested in organizing a demo for your company, please drop us an email and we'll make the arrangements for you.

Best regards,
Dave

Interview with Toby Smith, PE, LEED AP, AutoCAD MEP Product Manager, Autodesk Inc.

DaveQ: Toby, from your perspective as the Product Manager of Autodesk's leading CAD software product for the MEP industry, what are the major trends facing contractors today?

Toby: The two biggest trends facing the typical contractor are the level of effort required to maintain accurate coordination of designs between multiple AEC disciplines and the ever-increasing competitive pressure to be more productive and efficient. Contractors are also facing increasing demand to work within an integrated design environment - an approach that strives to improve the design, construction and operations processes.

I believe contractors are searching for new tools to help them keep up with the myriad of design and documentation changes that naturally occur throughout the construction process. They are looking for tools that can take them all of the way through the construction life-cycle, from design to fabrication to facilities management.

DaveQ: How important are contractors and fabrication to Autodesk?

Toby: Contractors are a valuable and very important part of the AEC community and also to the AEC Division of Autodesk.

With AutoCAD MEP, our target user has always been, and continues to be, the drafters and designers who create the construction documents. However, contractors are the ones responsible for building something tangible from those documents. In order to provide a more integrated solution, we have been working with EastCoast CAD/CAM to bring their years of fabrication knowledge and manufacturer's content to AutoCAD MEP, allowing us to address a significant number of contractor-specific product requirements.

DaveQ: Toby, if you had to summarize the primary features of AutoCAD MEP 2009 what would you say?

Toby: The value of AutoCAD MEP 2009 can be placed in three distinct themes:

Ease of Use: AutoCAD MEP 2009 improves the design and documentation workflow through its editing, modification and drafting productivity tools. AutoCAD MEP is built on top of AutoCAD and supports existing AutoCAD-based workflows while providing essential tools needed by MEP users.

Ease of Migration: AutoCAD MEP 2009 enables engineers, designers, and drafters to move seamlessly from a traditional AutoCAD-based drafting process to a purpose-built MEP solution with discipline-specific tools. Our product gives users the ability to increase the efficiency of the design and construction documentation process using real manufacturer content and then reuse design data by linking to industry-leading analysis, cost estimation, and fabrication software applications.

More Accurate Construction Documents: With AutoCAD MEP 2009, users can produce more accurate construction documents in less time, minimizing documentation coordination errors and costly change orders. AutoCAD MEP 2009 helps users reduce the number of Requests For Information (RFIs) and other costly design changes in the field by enabling more accurate and consistent construction documents.

DaveQ: Here's my last question. A number of Autodesk customers and potential EastCoast customers have asked us to describe the relationship between our two companies. What they're really asking is what does Autodesk think about this relationship? And so, I was wondering if you could share with us, what the relationship means to Autodesk.

Toby: While our Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) supports a number of other HVAC and Piping fabrication solutions, we have a deeper strategic relationship with EastCoast. Specifically, Autodesk has been working with EastCoast on the development of their Fabrication product for AutoCAD MEP, which is intended to provide a fabrication solution to the contractor community that interacts directly with the drawings produced by the design team in AutoCAD MEP. This product is currently in Beta testing, but once it is launched by EastCoast, contractors can use it to leverage the work already done and not spend large amounts of time re-drawing things to suit their needs. Our development work with EastCoast is part of our deep level of commitment and investment in our MEP platforms, and includes our entire family of MEP products - AutoCAD MEP and Revit MEP.