There are approximately 3200 electric utilities in the United States. Each utility has their own standards, procedures, workflows, and more for designing substations. To solve the overwhelming task of automating substation design to fit each utility's specific situation, Autodesk and AutomationForce partnered to develop the Substation Design Suite, an add-in for Inventor software and AutoCAD Electrical software. This class describes Nashville Electric Service's (NES) experience in adapting these software packages for their unique work processes. The class includes discussion of the challenges NES faced in the beginning, the pros and cons of using provided content versus creating customized content and provides examples of customizing Substation Design Suite content and templates in Inventor and adapting AutoCAD Electrical to meet specific design requirements.

Modern substation control systems use many intelligent devices that often have multiple communications paths to be managed. Do your protection and control engineers design this or do you have a dedicated telecom team? What software is used for that design? How are your workflows coordinated? Join us and discuss these and more topics related to the use of telecommunications circuits within (and between) electrical substations.

In this class, you learn to create standard (plates) circuits in AutoCAD Electrical software for substations. We cover how to use options in AutoCAD Electrical to insert blocks of standards to complete substation design in a quick, standard, and accurate way. We demonstrate the linking of parts in an assembled circuit, how to add options in a timely manner, and complete your design using all the tools that AutoCAD Electrical has to offer.

Have you ever wanted to utilize the 3D power of Inventor software with the intelligence of AutoCAD Electrical software for substation protection and control panel layouts? Tracing connections from the panel in the control house to the cable tray and then out to the equipment in the yard can be a very tedious process when you don’t have really good visualization tools. With AutoCAD Electrical software and Inventor software integration, users now have the ability to produce the panel layout in the substation control house in 3D.

This class will cover some of the challenges faced when adopting AutoCAD Electrical software for use in the design of substation control and communications systems. We will also look at the Solutions found during a single company's journey from simple 2D AutoCAD software drawings to a fully integrated Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach. Topics will include strategies for adaptation, possible areas of interest within your company, and thoughts on training and standards.

In this presentation we will discuss how to create and store standard parts (devices) into a library and how to build and store standard configurations of those parts into a catalog of controlled circuits. We will also detail various methods for developing a standard workflow, and we'll look at how to hone in on the most effective methodology using AutoCAD Electrical software. We will give consideration to the incorporation of existing (brownfield) projects, and we will demonstrate how to produce various drawing sets once rendering is complete. You will also learn how to extract a bill of materials from AutoCAD Electrical software and convert it into a standard format ready for exportation into a material ordering system. We will place emphasis on a step-by-step presentation approach, and we will allot time for questions and answers so that audiences will find the presentation useful, regardless of experience with AutoCAD Electrical software.

Autodesk, Inc., and AutomationForce Inc. partnered to develop Substation Design Suite software for Inventor software. Substation Design Suite software is a big part of the future of substation design. The functionality of the Substation Design Suite tools provides the ability to configure for your situation while meeting industry-wide standards. This class will give examples of using cloud-based content to do job takeoffs or estimates, configuring the Substation Design Suite template file and Content Editor, and placing station layouts and design checks.

Discover how BIM is now expanding into substation projects. Learn how Siemens ME has identified solutions to major challenges for substation design.

Learn about capitalizing on Substation Design Suite from AutomationForce, Inc., to perform design validation with AutoCAD Electrical software and Inventor software for both physical 3D designs and protection and controls design. These design validations can be used to help automate quality assurance checks that require details from each software, such as ampere rating of switches and breaker; correct orientation of breakers; correct equipment grounds; phase designations; and switch orientation. This session will cover solutions to handling these validations, including setting up new rules and further automation.

Learn how to capitalize on BIM 360 Field software for substation projects, managing assets and collaborating with field construction crews. This session features BIM 360 Field and BIM 360 Glue.

With Inventor software and the Substation Design Suite from Automationforce, Inc., you can utilize existing CAD files to complete projects in 3D. Quite often it isn’t financially viable to model an entire existing site, but you can still design your project in 3D and produce revised substation drawings, making parts of an existing station intelligent. Combining a new 3D model with existing 2D drawings enables utilities to benefit from the power of 3D design while saving time and money by eliminating the need to reverse engineer from site visits, markups, and other information that is needed to piece together the current as-constructed state of a substation. This session will cover possible workflows and use cases for brownfield design, which include setting up new 3D models and drawings with legacy 2D data as well as managing an existing bill of materials to add, change, or delete items based on a project.

This class will cover industry best practices and workflows for 3D substation design projects utilizing Inventor Professional software and the Substation Design Solutions toolkit. In addition, we will cover integration of Vault Professional software to maximize the efficiency of the 3D modeling processes. We will detail processes and procedures to ensure consistency, flexibility, and overall usability of 3D models, and we’ll learn how to change the way substation designs are currently done. We will present Vault categories, lifecycles, and states as a means to demonstrate utilization of 3D model data and how it can be integrated into existing systems to facilitate custom reporting and data analytics. This session features Inventor Professional and Vault Professional.

This class presents a real-life case study of a successful power substation design project using Autodesk Revit MEP software. It not only covers normal mechanical, lighting, power, security, hydraulic, and fire protection design, modeling, and documentation, but also introduces innovative ways of designing high-voltage cables in tight 3D building and tunnel spaces to meet the strict bending radius requirements. The solution provided some unprecedented methodology for high-voltage substation designers to resolve coordinated multidisciplinary 3D design issues. The methodology readily takes into account bending radius, electrical clearance, cable joints, site work, high-voltage cable position alternating and penetration in tunnels, high-voltage cable connections to Gas-Insulated Switchgear (GIS) and transformers through conduits and cable trays, lighting, and ventilation design.

In this class, we use Inventor® software to demonstrate techniques to combine a 3D substation project model and component pricing, extract bill of materials (BOM) information, and help estimate station costs.

This class will discuss the value of standardization as a channel of innovation for the usage of Inventor software, AutoCAD Electrical software, and Vault software. We will examine the various touchpoints when adopting standards to set up Substation Design Solution software for an organization. We will demonstrate how standardization can lead to innovation and best practices throughout organizations and even industries, and we will show examples of how standardized setup and input has led to more efficient workflows.

In this class, we examine substation assemblies and models for a utility. We also look into the lifecycle for substation parts in Vault Professional software. We cover the use of Items to keep track of information, such as purchase price, basic impulse level (BIL), operating voltage, specification information, and more. We discuss how to work in Inventor software and how to use the released bias or non-released bias to an assembly for insertion into your model. Finally, we examine how to keep track of legacy designs and greenfield designs in a standard format.

In this class, we show how we used Navisworks® Manage software and Microsoft® Project to combine a substation project schedule and a 3D substation Inventor® software model to help visualize and adjust the construction of a station.

Meet with electric utility industry peers to discuss the intricacies of substation design. Find out how other utilities are using design resources. Compare workflows. Share successes, failures and challenges. Benefit from others' experience. Share ideas for improving processes. The more knowledge we have, the better we can design substations.

This session will cover the ways that Inventor software and AutoCAD Electrical software interact with each other for a much better workflow. When you use Inventor, you can see an actual representation of a component such as transformers, regulators, breakers, and so on. This lets the designer have better judgment for clearances, footprint, connections points, and more. When you incorporate AutoCAD Electrical, you can use the Inventor components converted from 3D to 2D format in order to have a more realistic representation. This will help the designer determine the correct wiring points on a device, as well as clearances and bend radius.

In this class, you will learn how to customize substation design using a utility company standard philosophy with AutoCAD® Electrical and Autodesk® Inventor® software. We will cover in depth standard techniques to configure each module (Structural, Electrical, and Site Development) as a utility platform. You will improve your drawing efficiency, accuracy, coordination, and overall productivity. The use of consistent utility standards will give you the ability to validate data very quickly. Use this utility standard philosophy to create a fully integrated utility library that is applicable for new and existing projects. With minimal manual data input, you will be able to generate and retrieve documentation such as bills of materials, single line, three line, elementary/schematic, wiring diagram, panel, cable lists, structural analysis, station layout, grading plans, and asset information. Attendees should have general Inventor and AutoCAD Electrical knowledge.