Aveva, Leica Announce Alliance

HOUSTON, May 19 -- Aveva, a supplier of engineering information technology systems for the process, energy and marine industries, has announced an alliance with Leica Geosystems HDS Inc. (formerly Cyra), a 3-D laser scanning products division of Leica Geosystems AG, in the use of automatically captured 'as-built' plant information for new and ongoing engineering projects.

The companies will integrate 3-D laser-scanned survey data with Aveva's Vantage plant design management system (PDMS). In conjunction with Leica's Cyclone software technology, it will enable engineers to process laser-scanned data for use with PDMS.

Leica Geosystems HDS, based in San Ramon, Calif., specializes in laser scanning, a technique that employs reflected lasers to create geometrically accurate digital models of existing structures. The company said increased recognition of the value of plant data and the need to execute "revamp" projects with minimum plant downtime are fueling the adoption of the technology, also known as high-definition surveying. Aveva has been involved with as-built data capture processes, such as photogrammetry, since the 1970s.

Gathering and maintaining accurate information about existing plant and offshore facilities is a recognized challenge to the engineering industry, Aveva said in a statement. "The problem becomes particularly evident during site revamps and extensions when projects that are digitally modeled must tie into and avoid physical 'clashes' with existing installations, for which there may be no reliable computer model," the company said.

John Sanins, head of Vantage plant design, said, "Aveva's as-built engineering strategy forms the platform on which we will provide open access to packaged laser point cloud data in PDMS, irrespective of the laser-scanning technology used in the plant survey. The synergy between Aveva's datacentric foundation and Leica's high-performance object database architecture supports the sharing and development of extended technology."

For more information, visit: www.aveva.com