If you missed the recent Autodesk See the Suite Advantage Virtual Event, don’t worry! Autodesk has made all of the content available on-demand so you can browse the presentations, white papers, and more when your schedule permits. I even found a few interesting presentations that could really interest our public sector audience: • Accelerate Transportation Project Delivery with AutoCAD Civil 3D • Better Planning with AutoCAD Map 3D • The Power of Map 3D for Planning in the Electric Industry • Designing Substations with Digital Prototypes: Nashville Electric Service Moves Beyond 3D

Since 1995 DLT Solutions has been Autodesk's GSA Schedule Partner providing products and services to the federal government. Combined with our understanding of the government procurement process, and Autodesk’s 3D design software, we were able to provide the public sector with the best in design and manufacturing software and digital content creation tools.

Who doesn’t need more time these days? Well, we’ve listened to your feedback and have extended the deadline for the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards. Thanks for all the entries so far! If you haven’t submitted your nomination you now have until October 14 to enter. What are the [acronym] Magazine CAD Awards?

Is Smart Grid coming soon to your neighborhood? Don't count on it. With respect to consumer Smart Meters, only about 25% of the installed base has been replaced or approved for replacement. Smart Grid's fundamental concept is that the addition of digital technologies to the electric utility distribution system will permit the monitoring, analysis, control and communications required to maximize throughput while reducing consumption. This will enable utilities to distribute electricity as efficiently as possible and allow end users to consume electricity as economically as possible. While the benefits of Smart Grid are well understood and the technologies to implement the Smart Grid vision have been developed and are rapidly maturing, deployments to date are limited. Let's be clear, however: Smart Grid is a global market where some countries are moving much faster than the USA and where global manufacturers and software companies with sophisticated offerings are staking claims to a share of the market. The worldwide Smart Grid product and services market has been estimated at $69 Billion in 2009 growing to $186 Billion by 2015.

The deadline to enter the [acronym] Magazine Public Sector CAD Awards is fast approaching! If you work in the field of digital design – whether you use AutoCAD, or any other software – we want to know how these tools, combined with your skills and expertise have helped your agency achieve its goals. It doesn’t matter whether you work for the Department of Defense or a state and local government agency (we’ve received entries from both), this is your opportunity to shine! Learn more about the [acronym] CAD Awards and meet our judges.

By Kevin Breslin, Director of Professional Services, Infrastructure Solutions, IMAGINiT Technologies. Is your organization considering the transition to a new engineering software platform or is your team ready for an upgrade? If so, read on to ensure a smooth transition. The following five key findings are extracted from experiences gathered over hundreds of design and engineering information modelling system implementations. Follow these five recommendations to save time and effort and avoid the pitfalls while keeping your live projects right on schedule. Step by step, let’s look at the best practices to planning a successful transition.

By Pam Broviak, City Engineer/Assistant Director of Public Works at City of Geneva, Illinois. When my past employer, the city of LaSalle, installed an automatic meter reading (AMR) system, I was excited about the technology and looked forward to improving the efficiency of our meter reading and water billing system. Some of the benefits included tracking and notifications to staff of customer leaks, immediate final reads, high/low water usage, and tampering alerts. Yet, as an engineer, I also planned on using the data for designing, monitoring, and operating our water system. My vision had been to link the data to a digital map created from our GIS where dots represented meters. Colors and other indicators would tell us of real-time reads, flows, pressures, and all that good stuff allowing a visualization of how our system was functioning using real-time actual data. Unfortunately, once I saw the software and asked about the ability to extract data from the database, not only did the vendors seem surprised anyone would even want this information, they made it clear their system was designed for billing only. If we wanted to do anything more with the data, we would have to hire our own programmer and create our own setup.

You may have noticed that [acronym] is running a contest for government employees – the [acronym] CAD Awards. In fact, the awards are the first of their kind specifically aimed at the public sector - and I find our timing with this contest a little curious. Through sheer coincidence, Federal Computer Week last week reported the conclusions of a new study by the Partnership for Public Service, which claims that “Agencies don’t reward innovation, fed’s say”. According to the report, “nine out of 10 federal employees are seeking ways to better perform their jobs, only about four out of 10 believe innovation and creativity are rewarded”.

Arlington County is at the forefront of an environmental trend that puts energy labels on county buildings. The Department of Environmental Services plans to label each building with energy efficiency information. The labels will be part of the county’s Community Energy Plan which hopes to make Arlington one of the leading counties in the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Arlington may have gotten the idea from the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act which included suggestions for building labeling, but died in the Senate. The plan will likely be implemented sometime this year but the details about what the label will look like and the information to be displayed are still undetermined. The goal of this program is to raise awareness about energy use and how to implement conservation. They also hope it will inspire private owners to apply energy labels on their own buildings. The labels may be similar to what the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, or the "Building EQ" label the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers produces. Arlington may also be taking cue from the practices Europe has put into place.

“In 1989, one of our first clients came to us with a big problem. A disgruntled employee had waltzed out the door with electronic copies of top secret designs and went to work for a competitor.” Another horror story here: “During the late 80s, a client who used AutoCAD for machine design called us in a panic. The company had just built a $250K prototype of a paper machine from the wrong revision of a drawing.” Since then, the folks at Synergis Software have been in the business of preventing these disasters from happening. Over the years they have developed a solution that not only makes managing your engineering document library easier, but safer as well.