Episode 4: The Evolution of Software in the HVAC Duct and Fittings Fabrication Industry

Welcome to Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery. I’m John Welty. I’m here with David Daw and Mike Bailey, two icons of the industry, and we’re going to be talking about software in general today and a little bit of the history of how some of this equipment, and the whole business, has come together.

And so let’s kick that off to David. What have you seen being changing with how businesses are being run differently today than they were 40 years ago?

Well when I first started out, everything was manual in the beginnings of the software was on CAM, computer-aided manufacturing. That was started with very rudimentary labeling programs, which were developed by mechanical data, East Coast Sheet Metal, CTI, very early 80s.

These were programs that had somewhat of a smart label, a data attached to it where it had the cut, size, gauge metal and all a contractor had to do then or worker was manually scribe onto the sheet metal and then physically cut it with a shear or a snip and that development led to the machinery, computer machinery side where the labels where then ended up being written with code which ended up driving a plasma cut or ultimately a laser but that was actually the beginning for my knowledge. And then from that maybe the mid to late 80s the development of CAD, Computer Aided Design or Computer Aided Drafting which now allowed you the ability to sort of manually drafting a floor or an air handling unit system then you would go to a computer and that could get done so much faster but that also had data attached to it too which ultimately lead to the ability to download from a CAD drawing to a machine to both cut the fittings and to drive the straight sheet metal on a coil line basically…

There is also estimating, estimating was done all manual back in the late 70s early 80s and a couple of companies but in estimation for one in QuickPen started developing take off mechanisms with little wheels or a QuickPen that could do pin point and ended up creating an estimate that had again, smart data attached to it as far as how many pieces and gauges of metal, material, labor, cost so you could actually end up with a computerized estimate which was infinitely more accurate and faster than manual those where the two big things that happened during the 80s.

Interesting, So that essentially they were using the software in the back office in order to first put some smarter tools in front of the people that where producing the products…

Correct.

…and then it actually extended on into the shop to actually produce the products itself.

Correct.

That’s so fascinating. Truly. Mike can you speak to that?

Yeah I don’t have 40 years of history like David does but when I came into the business in 95 the computer aided drawing was here CAM was here but it wasn’t without problem. It was with a lot of problems actually. You’re only as good as your drawings right? And they come from architects and engineers so when the computer aided drawing and shop detail drawings when they start to come out it really sped up the process because in construction today… I think we talked about it before these guys get a job on Friday they want you on site by Monday. So you got to be able to draw what they want. They use more of a Revit based program than a MEP program so that all the trades can actually draw at the same time.

And what that’s about is collision checking, to make sure that you don’t have a lot of collision between the trainees and the job. Its less input bigger output, less chance of human error that’s for sure like everything else we talked about, but the ability to do your shop detail drawings based on your specs and scopes of your shop and whoever you have to download to that camp station which then can download to the water jet, a plasma, the laser and the coil line its just created a seamless operation when it comes to getting that intelligence to the shop the manufacturer and to lessen any human error, right?

So more and more you see the contractor base going toward that technology. If you have not you should at least be curious and want to know more about it and reach out but its here the drawings are better today we do recognize that. Our detection engineers I believe heavily rely on the contractors to do this, so its helping that process as well. 

That’s good and for those listening or watching where going to have some links available. The Revit software that Mike Bailey was speaking about is an Autodesk product and we can give some links to that but there’s you know a wide variety of tools out there that are being used…

Sure.

… That you see in place. We find that a lot of the industry does seem to be revolving around those things. We talked about this a little bit in our previous episode when we were talking about the shop floor layout and just kind of that how flow. So this software that we are talking about is helping to facilitate that exchange of information that starts in the architectural stage, is that right? And that has to be engineered and that knowledge is being captured by engineering it has to be passed down through. There is a lot of opportunities for making mistakes if the data is being handed off and transcribed from system to system and so that’s what you are seeing is that there is a seamlessness in order to try to avoid those human errors were the information is being changed from here to there because they can actually pass it all through as a solid stream of information all the way down to the machine is that what you are saying?

Yeah I think you look at the Trimble SysQue Product. It’s a Revit based product. It’s a level detailed 400 product so the detail in it…the program is very detailed if you want to put it that way. Also, has intuitive products in it, millions of products have been specked from manufacturers all over the country with their specifications and pricing within that shop.

Oh and built right into that.

Built right into it so you can actually click on that louvre and if it is a Greenheck Louvre or a fan it will give you the spec and the price. So there is over millions of items in that system Revit-based platform to help with that process as well. So it goes right on down to purchasing goes into procurement based on the buildings it gets these guys out ahead of it, any problems going forward.

Well that’s got to be a tremendous time saver for the engineering group then too?

Sure.

Interesting.

And for us it’s…we work with a lot of people but for our machines, we have got to make sure the automations up to par with whatever is going on out there with the CAD space. Just give Revit space to make sure our machines happy builders who accept these downloads because, today labor shortage is real. It is not getting any better. So in order to cut down on labor that’s a great way to do it right and you got back checks and processes to make sure it does deliver to the machines correctly.

Yeah and I know we have been involved with a lot of recent changes it seems to be something that the more we improve upon it the more we find opportunities to improve upon it further so its something that we have definitely worked on quite a bit especially once we…some of the benefits of these BIM based systems is that you now get where the contractors are wanting to cut the take outs right into the duct as its being produced in a duct line. Which created a requirement for a new protocol in order to exchange even more information down to the machine.

So I’ve been involved with some of that and working out those …defining what that protocol is and the learning what things are missing in order to help people understand what it is. How that information does have to digitally be transcribed from the way they look at it because its interesting to a contractor they are looking at these products as a finished product but to a machine producer we start with a coil of steel. They look at a piece of duct as where the sticker goes is on the outside, the bends go down and now you have a rectangular piece of duct. When you make that we actually bend it up so its upside down and we’ll have some pictures up on the YouTube video you can watch that. We’ll have some links down below so you can see some images of that. It is a fascinating thing that its kind of difficult for people to track those transitions but literally the part has to be flipped upside down and we produce it inside out and so those are all things that you just take for granted but they provide some interesting technical difficulties… 

Yeah.

…and opportunities for computer here also because these software packages have to have settings in order to make sure that they understand each other and are speaking the same language and that’s when we get into these protocols. So its been a fascinating journey to set some of those things up and so it’s interesting to see how far that extends in the system that we are downloading from.

Yeah and I think we have some future topics to talk about in podcasts and that’s going to be how do we get the younger generation involved in our industry. And the young generation just does not know how much software drives our industry and it is the number one thing. So as I am always preaching you need to know the software, you need to go to the file office and understand what the processes are…

Yeah.

…because how are you going to be successful with the hardware if you don’t know what the software is doing.

We will talk about that in a later podcast when it comes to younger generation and importance of trying to get the younger generation into our industry.

Yeah and I think we touched on that in a previous podcast also…

We did.

… So I’ll expand on that further.

That’s how important that is.

Yeah.

Well the reason why this is an amazing basic to the industry which particularly HVAC industry but the construction in general. Once you have a building erected in steel or in fireproofing or a concrete building you have what they call a colder building. Now you have to put things inside so you have an environmental environment that you can work in, its called the MEP, Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing and the reason why this is so difficult is, think about this, when you move water through a building or plumbing it is a fairly small round pipe. Same thing with electrical conduit but when you move air through a building you have to have a significant volume of a medium to move a square rectangular duct work around so the space inside the building is critical, but again how does this matter?

Well because if the electrical conduit or the plumbing or piping is incorrect when there is a collision with the duct work well its pretty easy to put an elbow and bend a pipe around it, but it is extremely difficult to take a say 30 inch by 40 pieces of duct work and bend it around to fit so these collisions are critical.

Now if you wanted to eliminate the whole problem you would have a building designed around the HVAC system first but that is not going to be an aesthetic building that you want to live in or work in so this is the reason why this HVAC design and collision work is so critical. The fact that you can take these mistakes out before you put the building in just saves time and a lot of money.

Well I guess I think the thing that comes to mind with that David is that you have some of these projects are massive. I remember one of the customers that I was assisting, that had done the new duct work for the new World Trade Center which, if you think about the volume of duct that was involved in that project its hard for me to wrap my head around, but some of those things are going to require a lot of different players to do the design work and that particular company may have done it all under one roof but a lot of them don’t, right?

So you have a lot of groups that are designing these things on separate systems and have those things not collide with one another, which is where you get into that BIM module is that they are able to do that exchange data and even though they are not on the same system or even working for the same company they can work on the same project and understand which choices have already been made by other people and let people know that we are going to need to go through here. You are going to need to remove your pipe or vise versa.

And that raises a good point I look forward to be on site with that mechanical contractor called Harry’s Mechanical out in New York and they were redoing the World Trade Center during that process but they also had the drawings from the original World Trade Center. Hand written drawings. The same architect, engineer redid the new World Trade Center electronically. So its fascinating to see the drawings hand drawn, hand written in the 60s to where we were in the 2007-8 timeframe to see electronically drawn it just brought out the whole situation of automation when it came to the BIM model. So, pretty neat.

Yeah I started in drafting myself, lets just say more then 20 years ago, I don’t want to date myself but when we started we were on drafting boards so I know what you are talking about and when you mentioned earlier about the level of detail 400. When you are hand drawing things you left out details that were not necessary because if you ever had to make a change you didn’t want to have to erase it and redraw it and now in the modern systems you see much deeper detail because as you zoom out they just don’t show it to you and if you zoom in you just keep getting more and more detail all the way into it. So it’s incredible how much more information they can put into these things now also.

I think it’s fascinating.

Which, has got to be helpful to everybody from producing the parts that go into it to building the building itself.

I’ve always said it was fascinating what the human mind can dream up, then they got to draw it, then it’s got to fit.

Yeah.

It’s got to work.

It’s got to work and that’s usually the tough part.

It does between all the trades. There’s always going to be some collision but the opportunity for less collision is greater than it’s ever been.

So you can see all of these tools just improve communication between those individuals that happen to be involved in bringing such a big project to life.

To get a look at it.

Well I think that’s a good place to stop today on behalf of Mike Bailey and David Daw I’m John Welty thank you again for attending Shop Talk with Mestek Machinery join us again next time.

So hopefully our discussion of software and BIM modeling was helpful to you. Of course each shop is unique and has its own operational needs and constraints but that’s why we are here to help you as you make these evaluations on software and how to improve your operation. So please don’t hesitate to reach out for a consultation. The best place to do so is through our website at mestekmachinery.com and there is absolutely no obligation we would love to understand what you are looking to do and see how we can help you achieve your objectives. For now, thanks for listening on behalf of Mike Bailey and David Daw I’m John Welty join us again for the next episode of Shop Talk with Mestek machinery.