Intelligent Data Transfer

by | Jul 21, 2017

Waiting for your 12d Model project to transfer?

We’ve heard your pain, not just 12d Model but all of your geospatial data, its bringing your network to a grinding halt.

Everyone in the office seems to know when you’re firing up 12d Model or transferring project data, file transfers slow down and the administration are most likely getting frustrated.  The big financial cost is your designers, they are waiting upward of 15 minutes for their project to load from the server.  If you multiply that 15 minutes by the number of designers, drafters, CAD managers and whoever else maybe accessing data, the price starts to add up.

What is slowing down your network?

The law of averages say around 80% of the data and files that is in your office belongs to a geospatial design package, whether it be 12d Model, AutoCAD, Civil3d etc. On average around 4 in every 5 staff aren’t even accessing this data on a daily basis.  They are most likely using general business software packages such as Microsoft word, excel and outlook.  It’s the 20% of staff working on engineering data who are creating the issues on your local network speed.

Typically, staff would be accessing their files from the office network server, including your geospatial data.  If you have an AEC data set of around 1200 files – 900 megabytes, to access this data your design application is going to read that data in.  Every single time you want access to this data there will need to be a transfer of at least 900 MB, and this will grow as the project grows.  This process can be improved by caching files locally and reducing the amount of data being transferred or downloaded. Most windows applications aren’t network aware, they don’t know how to cache information to make the transfer quicker, to do this you may require a data management package that allows files to be cached locally.

12d Synergy’s intelligent data transfer

12d Synergy’s Intelligent Data Transfer makes sure that you are only delivered the files that have changed since last time you accessed the project.  This reduces the data transfer by upward of 91% over the life of a project.  Consider the same project data as before, with intelligent data transfer the 1200 file – 900MB project is now just 100 files and 50MB in size.

We spoke to one of our 12d Synergy clients and they told us that they had a 320MB project on their network.  Every time they opened that project it took them 13 minutes in transfer time.  With 12d Synergy’s Intelligent Data Transfer they reduced that wait time down to 5 minutes when they initially accessed the project.  As the data is locally cached, all subsequent file transfers were reduced to under 1 minute.  This process was saving them around 4 hours, per user, per week.  On a small car park project running over 12 weeks, with 6 users, on a charge out rate of around $50 per hour, they managed to save $43,200 on the project.

data transfer cost savings

Savings made by using 12d Synergy are typically multiplied when there are more users on the network or when the projects are either larger/data heavy.  For organisations with multiple offices, work-site offices with poor internet speed or interstate and international firms, further savings can be made by using the File Replication Server (FRS).


Interested in Saving Time & Money?

Reducing your data and document administration time, and file transfer time can save you money. If you have further questions or wish to know more about how 12d Synergy can help your organisation, we’d love to hear from you.

Red magnet

Author

Mitch helps engineering and construction teams achieve success through the adoption of world class common data environments. Mitch joined 12d Synergy in 2017 and now champions our growth across Australia. Mitch helps engineering and construction teams achieve success through the adoption of world class common data environments. Mitch is also a sports fanatic and self-confessed cricket tragic.