The AguaClara Infrastructure Design Engine (AIDE), our automated water treatment plant design tool, has gone through many iterations since its origins in 2008, when it was based on Mathcad, AutoCAD, Microsoft Word, and LabView. AIDE is now based on Onshape, which has FeatureScript as its built-in programming language that is fully integrated into the CAD environment.
Since our earlier draft of an AguaClara plant, we have been focusing on two major changes. The first was a complete overhaul of the method we use to bring the design algorithms and drawings of subcomponents into higher level assemblies. The second major change was to connect a parts database with our design process so that we could create a bill of materials. A bill of materials is the list of parts required to manufacture a product with their quantities, suppliers, and cost.
Prices and physical components for each part are taken from part catalogues provided to us by our implementation partners and entered into a database. This database is then integrated into our designs in Onshape, and subsequently each part is automatically assigned a part number upon its entry into the model. This results in the self-generating formation of a bill of materials that includes quantities and prices, as well as a cut list that provides sizes.
The bill of materials will be incredibly useful in the development of general cost estimates and is especially powerful due to its ability to adapt the price to automatically reflect any changes that are made in the design. With our current plant, it takes under a minute to generate a new design that includes a material cost estimate. We have been meeting with one of our implementation partners, Agua para el Pueblo, to get their feedback on new designs. During this process, we continue to incorporate their suggestions into the design. Below is a quote from an Agua Para el Pueblo engineer, Aminta Núñez Galdámez, describing how the bill of materials affects their work.
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Please stay in touch and watch out for further updates on our progress!
Blog Post Author: Izumi Matsuda