Full-service provider CDG implemented the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to connect all disciplines and handle the entire building lifecycle of its water conservancy and hydropower projects in an integrated 3D data application environment.
Entering the age of smart hydropower
On the Jinsha River, between Southwest China’s Yunnan Province and Sichuan Province, lies one of the tallest and most technologically advanced mega hydropower stations in the world. Engineered by CDG, the Wudongde Hydropower Station dam stands at 270-meters high and takes advantage of cutting-edge technologies to run more efficiently and safely. This includes real-time temperature monitoring, low heat cement and an intelligent water flow system that can be adjusted to cool the 2.8 million cubic meters of concrete and prevent cracking. Everything about this hydropower station was built from the ground up to be innovative, starting with the engineering survey and design processes – all handled using the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
Making the transition to efficient 3D design and complete product lifecycle management technology is central to CDG’s vision to transform the way it designs and develops new water conservancy and hydropower projects, and manages the ongoing maintenance of infrastructures.
“We need to rapidly transform our development so that we can distinguish ourselves in the market while protecting the eco-environment,” said Xiaomao Wang, chief engineer at CDG. “Currently, our top task is to expand our growth space by digitally transforming ourselves. We’re doing this by digitalizing our traditional businesses, and then combining and integrating it with big data, cloud, internet of things (IoT), mobile IoT and 5G technologies to improve the quality of our products.”
A new approach for Wudongde
CDG implemented the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to solve two major challenges: to modernize its manual, 2D design processes and integrate a multitude of disciplines and working practices on one platform to pool information, improve collaboration and boost quality.
“We needed a platform for collaborative design, so that we could streamline the business architectures and processes traditionally used in water conservancy and the hydropower industry,” Wang said.
CDG migrated its business processes to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform in phases.
“We chose the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to assist our current project with some on-site design work, so that we can gradually shift our conventional 2D design to 3D to improve efficiency,” said Min Feng, director of the BIM Center Hydro Junction Department at CDG. “Secondly, we wanted to improve our overall design quality and expand the scope of services we offer and data we use. We’re now using the platform as a 3D BIM tool for design, operations and maintenance work.”
Uniting project management
Successfully managing large-scale projects like the Wudongde Hydropower Station involves bringing together multiple disciplines and industries – something which has been a challenge for CDG as it widens the scope of projects and services it delivers.
“For water conservancy and hydropower projects, the professional scope involved is very wide ranging, including dams, factories and so on,” said Shangfa Chen, director of the R&D center at CDG. “There are many buildings and disciplines involved.”
With ENOVIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, CDG can bring all project facets together in one place and streamline its processes.
“The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is a very powerful and open platform,” Chen said. “It unifies and coordinates the different disciplines involved and empowers us to use information more effectively. It gives us access to a single data source to achieve collaborative design and gain a complete view of the entire lifecycle, from planning, survey and design, to construction, operation and management.”
The platform also helps CDG tackle complexity by establishing a common working template for new projects and capturing all data created in the process to inform future projects, and plan next stages such as building and maintenance.
“For our water conservancy and hydropower projects, the mechanical, electrical and metal structural equipment involved in these structures is very complex and must take into account topographic and geological conditions,” Chen said. “Different industries define their own professional requirements on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to establish a template suitable for their own discipline, which can then be integrated into the overall project. We collect all of this different information and create knowledge libraries. We can then reuse all parametric templates and component libraries.”
Importantly, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform provides all the functionality required to manage an entire project.
“We’ve mainly used ENOVIA and DELMIA on the Wudongde and Xulong projects and other large constructions,” Feng explained. “We use DELMIA to simulate the construction of arch dams. ENOVIA helps us keep our projects on track, plan resources and draw up a cost plan. We used the BIM capabilities on disciplines so they could collaborate in real time and refer to each other’s ongoing work. As each stage is completed, we’ve been able to easily release data to the teams at the same time to improve communication.”
This saves the engineers at CDG time going between different applications, and converting data into different geometry types and formats.
“We no longer need to shift between different software,” Feng said. “Previously, we needed to triangulate geology surfaces, but now we can select what we want to see according to terrain and geology without triangulation, making it more intuitive and much simpler.”
CDG manages all of its project planning, work breakdown structure, collaborative design, 3D review and relevant downstream services with the project management applications of ENOVIA.
“It is completely consistent with the concept of modern project management,” Chen said. “ENOVIA’s functions, based on single- or multi-project, can be organically unified with the project management in our entire development and design unit.”
Speeding up with 3D design
Making the transition from handling its engineering survey and design processes in 2D to 3D has been nothing short of transformational for CDG.
“The design ideas are completely different,” Chen said. “One is flat and the other is full 3D. In the past, when we had a design briefing after the design results were submitted, it was difficult to communicate what we had done. We had to repeatedly explain the abstract design blueprint to the construction owner. Now, it is much simpler to communicate with them because there is a 3D model. It is very intuitive and visual, so it can be understood quickly after a simple introduction.”
This new approach is also saving engineers significant time as they design new assets.
“Once the 3DEXPERIENCE platform was deployed, our design cycle began to shorten significantly,” Wang said. “For example, one of our generic designs might take one and a half months to complete in the past, but now usually takes only 10 days. We recently had to design more than a dozen outlet pump houses and all design drawings had to be delivered within three months. Working on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we finished all 11 projects within 40 days.”
To learn more about how CDG is using 3DEXPERIENCE to design and build smarter with BIM, read the full case study.
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