PROCAD talks with the piping design community.

What Makes Us Productive

In this incredible  age of digital technology, it made many of the cumbersome tasks real easy.

So much of what we do now depends on technology. The first thing in the morning, I check my email, Facebook and read the news. Information is so accessible and it for most part enriches our lives.

As for work tools, CAD technology has helped us increase productivity in every aspect. In using the properly configured applications, we can eliminate a good deal of mistakes and smartly gather and distribute data throughout  the entire enterprise.

PROCAD created all of its applications to take  advantage of technology. With project management tools, background input checking and report customization, companies can get good return on their investment by enhancing many aspects of their productivity.

Whether it is 3D or 2D CAD software,  your company performance will improve, guaranteed!


Future of Computation

There are many buzzwords going around these days; cloud, virtual computing and Software as a Service.

The future for computing and corporate IT systems is definitely heading towards these type of services. It makes great sense to have others look after much of your IT needs, including software patches, upgrades and most importantly, uniform and timely backup. It shifts these responsibilities to mega companies like Microsoft and Amazon which have a great capacity and resources to provide these services with minimal interruption to business. All that at low rates that continue to tumble as more “gorilla sized” companies enter the fray and provide their own cloud services.

This is especially critical to SMEs. As IT and hardware maintenance costs continue to rise, it’s a great relief to just have someone else deal with these complex and hugely expensive tasks, both in terms of hard cost and time lost.

It also makes good environmental sense. Instead of having multiple servers running at a fraction of their processing power and consuming a great deal of electricity, shared computing power allows for maximum use of the processors while consuming the same amount for energy. Of course you need better capacity, just like filling all the seats on a plane, to make these services operate optimally. And that’s coming!

PROCAD is taking many steps to help its customers get the best of these new offerings while meanwhile becoming even more environmentally responsible as a result – a win for the environment, our customers and PROCAD.


Keeping it Simple

In today’s software world, it’s not that easy to keep things simple. With the benefits of new technological advancements becoming more obvious, a certain level of complexity is built into the process of deploying new technologies.

In piping design, so much had been realized with the new software products that provides a complete process from design to procurement and construction. PROCAD is always looking for new ways to enhance its software applications to make it more productive. However, our goal is to keep the software as easy to use as possible. Although we aim to reduce training requirements, some training is always beneficial to fast track deployment of new software.

In addition to free PROCAD tutorials, we have a wide variety of training choices. Customers decide on how little of how much training, if any at all, they need for their staff. Training is delivered onsite or via the web. The latter is the most cost-effective since in this our customer base is global, web training is quite convenient.


What’s Next for Piping Design Software

Piping design has come a long way since the introduction of affordable CAD. Software from Autodesk and Bentley made CAD affordable for every size company. CAD was at one point the domain of large engineering companies that spent millions of dollars to deploy piping design software.

With Microcomputers, and thanks to Intel and Microsoft, the cost of setting up CAD workstations for piping design tumbled from the stratosphere down to earth.

The cost of computers and CAD software made it possible to develop vertical applications for piping design. In addition to drastically improving productivity, new piping software was also instrumental in reducing costly mistakes.

There is now so many flavors of 2D and 3D piping software that provides great flexibility to companies of any size, or even the individual contractor to choose the right software for their budgets and needs.

Through continued R&D, vision and customer feedback, PROCAD is always working on bringing better solutions to its customers. Will we at some point have software that does the actual piping design, yes but not immediately. Meanwhile, significant product improvements from most software vendors are making the piping designer’s job much easier. Or at least this is the plan!


Update P&ID Drawings

P&ID drawings are very important documents that should be maintained at all times to reflect the most up-to-date plant processes.

With good P&ID drawings, operators and maintenance staff have a clear idea on the plant’s status. Any modifications and revamps must be added to the P&ID drawings to ensure plant safety.

Here’s a sample of a P&ID created by using the AutoFLOW software:

PID 21