Reporting Tools Overview
When analyzing the work process there are almost always one of the three areas of automation that are underserved.
We have looked at the first two already, productivity and smart tools.
Productivity tools address quality and speed, while smart tools offer a means to automate event driven actions such as labeling or moving related graphics at the same time – the latter is particularly helpful when users are unaware of entity dependencies.
The third area is reporting.
This involves extracting data from CAD and then exporting to CSV, a word document, or excel file complete with formatting.
Basic extraction tools might gather information about levels, element types, and locations. While more sophisticated reporting will dig into the smart data facilitating the creating of estimates, bills of material, and engineering analysis. Further, the interrogation of smart data can lead to more complex design validations beyond levels, color, and style.
