Offshore Europe 2009

In a couple weeks one of the most importants Oil&GAS conference will start in Aberdeen.

Apart from talking about all the non technical issues related to the Oil&Gas world, there will also be some areas related to the latest technology used that will probably be very interesting.

I leave here the link in case someone can attend to it.

http://www.offshore-europe.co.uk/

A realistic 3D inmersion

Shell, Rijswijk - 3D Reality Center

Barco.com

It has to be great to work on one of those big companies that have a complete virtual reality room where you can test all the new technology that comes out. Lately I've been working with some of those, just helping to set up a new environment and it seems that the big Oil&Gas companies are taking it seriously with heavy configurations of VR centers. As far as I know Barco's technology is being one of the most used technology for the momment.

http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/pressreleases/show.asp?index=1568

This technology can be very useful to do review meetings during construction phase or training. I guess that it is fun to get a training in one of these :)

3D meetings

I just downloaded the latest version of skype and for my good suprise I can share my screen. As soon as I saw this I got in contact with a collegue through skype and run Walkinside SW from VRcontext (this is the company I work for). Normally walkinside was well handled by tools like webex, which is the official tool we use to do 3D Meetings when we need to share 3D models.
I was very happy to see that skype was meeting by far many of my expectations and I could share my screen quite well. This is going to be a very useful tool for me although there is still a feature that I think is key for real 3D meetings, which is to allow the attendants to get the control of the screen, I guess you can't ask for everything in the first release :).
Just in case you're interested there are other tools from adobe (which is free), gotomeeting, vnc... but these I found not good enough when sharing 3D content.
By last I would like to mention IBM's DCV which is probably the best tool in performance but may also be the most expensive one :)

Keeping the models updated

On all the projects communication and collaboration among all the members that are in the project is a key factor in order to have a successful end.
When talking about project documents, the collaboration implies that everyone in the project is using the same updated document.

Why? To avoid that two members of the same project work on different documents that don’t imply taking the same actions.

In the 3D world the same can be applied but it’s not usually the case. Normally, as the 3D models are not “official” there may be different versions of the same model the different project members are using in order to take actions and decisions.

But as said in my previous post, when handling 3D models, these need to be always updated with the latest version. When this is correctly done, end users will feel confident at the moment of taking decision or acting; otherwise these models won’t be trusted and therefore won’t be used in the important moments.

At this point there are many tools to share updated documents like for example SharePoint from Microsoft or just Google docs where you can store documents.

In the 3D world this is not so simple because the file size can be huge (over 1GB) which of course can’t be easily download over the internet. To avoid this big downloads different vendors have chosen different techniques like data streaming, virtualization and others.

As you can see there are different ways of doing this but what it’s a must is that you make sure you’re always using the latest version of the model (even if you’re just using an ftp site to have them under control)

Is 3D really needed

Actually I do think that 3D is not just something that can be called luxury anymore.
As Jeff Winston, The Use of 3D Visualization in Planning and Design—Is 3D a luxury or a necessity? The 3D world can help to make decisions easier or can help people to have a better understanding of a "hidden" or no existing world, that at the moment is just virtually available.
In addition many inexpensive tools are available to share these 3D models that are created.

Some tools

When talking about VR there are some tools that can be used.
As I said in previous posts, it depends on the momment; the end user could require different tools as it's not the same to require just a tool to check the work done during the design, as the one to merge the whole project into one big model, etc...
During the first phase of design, the engineers have their own tools that dependant on their design tools and others that are more independant and support quite well different file formats.

Big project in 3D (Part III)

Following the last post

While the construction of the platform or refinery is being done, the management should already start thinking about training the operators that will be running the plant in the future. Nowadays it’s very difficult to start the training before the plant is completely finished in an environment that could really reflect the daily work that these field operators and control room operators may need to do. This issue is basically solved if the 3D model can be used to train these people.

In addition to the mentioned SW tools that enable the 3D visualization, there other tools that can also be integrated in order to complete a whole Operation Training System (OTS) where the control room operators can really interact with the field operators in order to reproduce virtually real problems that may need to be solved in the future plant. Of course, there is no need to say that these operators will be able to meet and learn the structure of the plant before this is built, which can be a very important factor in order to save time (and money) during the start up of the plant.

The next step after the construction and the training of the plant operators would be the start up of the plant itself. This is a very important moment in the plant life because is the moment where it really starts to function. Although the 3D model may not be critical during this phase, it’s also true that can help to remotely understand what is being done as, if the 3D model is well integrated in the SCADA system of the plant it can reflect any change during the start up.

After the start up phase, we enter in the production phase where the 3D model as built can again take a very important relevance. During the production phase there are many departments that could use the 3D model.
It’s very important that the 3D model is well integrated with the SCADA system and all the internal document management systems, why? Because once the 3D model is integrated with these two important systems, basically anyone who is using these, will be able to take advantage of the 3D model, saving time and money when decisions are taken.
Finally I would like to mention that the 3D models can also be used for safety simulation where different scenarios can be built in order to see how the attendants to the simulation react on different difficult situations.