DataViewer gets airborne

By Siobhan Chapman

Swamped under a glut of technical drawings, Air Traffic Controllers AirServices Australia will implement a program to help staff get quick access to data.

AirServices Australia, handles a large volume of technical documentation, records and engineering drawings. However, workers critically need quick access to up-to-date technical data.

After evaluating several data management systems, AirServices Australia chose DataViewer from Practical Programs, because it can operate over the organisation’s Australia-wide network. AirServices Australia has twelve MicroStation workstations spread between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Making its CAD data accessible to all relevant personnel was important to AirServices. The company has approximately 70,000 CAD data files, all stored on the Brisbane network server which has a striped RAID array of five 180GB disks.

Document management software DataViewer allows the user to display CAD data on Web browsers. Users can view and possibly mark-up CAD data by means of DataViewer’s Web browser interface, which DataViewer claims avoids the need for any special viewer software to be installed on every network computer.

DataView works with AirServices’ existing MicroStation programs and AutoCAD data. All access to data is via the DataViewer data manager. This ensures right of access, proper recording of the stages of initiating work, checking and approval, and archiving.AirServices Australia uses the mark-up facilities in DataViewer, which are known as Redlining.

The mark-up data file is automatically linked to its CAD data file until the work has reached Approved status, so that anyone referring to the data is aware of changes that may be in progress. Mark-up can be done from the location of the relevant equipment because it needs only a Web browser.

AirServices uses DataViewer network wide, greatly reducing the volume of large format printing and circulation of paper, as well as providing quicker access to data and ensuring the most up-to-date versions are always in use by everyone.