SECURITY
Security of the model is controlled by appropriate setting of the rights of the user team members. The rights are set by one of the team who can also
act as the DAD Administrator. When logged as the Administrator this person can at any time:
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Add/remover DAD users
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Grant/withdraw rights to each DAD user individually. The rights are defined in detail covering 20+ activities; refer to the DAD User Manual for
a full description.
Windows authentication is used to establish the identity of users
OBJECT ORIENTED MODEL
You can design any type of power, control or ICT system in DAD. Design is performed by building a virtual model. There are a full range of features to:
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define all properties for classes of components
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create components
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build assemblies of components
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place the components and assemblies in appropriate locations
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connect them together with cables, signals, fibres or flows
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copy interconnected assemblies of components for re-use
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link reference material (files) to the components.
At any time the model can be queried to:
- list all materials filtered and sorted
- display all connections in graphical formats
- publish these as controlled documents.
DAD has in-built:
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a document manager
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a sketch creation tool.
Project management tasks like estimating, and recording costs and progress can be performed in DAD or you can export the model data to other packages
for such tasks.
The model can be extensively revised at any time without significant rework. For example you can:
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rename any object
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move their location and revise assemblies
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change object types
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change the characteristics of a component class
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revise connections.
All user actions performed on objects, components, connections and published documents, are logged. This history is not user editable. There are tools
to allow the auditing of engineering.
DAD supports the complete lifetime of systems by:
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allowing system changes to be planned or recorded after the event
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providing information for any maintenance task
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record maintenance routines
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support fault finding
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acting as a store for any supplementary information that emerges during operations
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record faults at the component or connection level.
FULL HISTORY
All users actions in the model are automatically logged. Every change in data or connection is stored with time, date and user name. The previous
configuration of the piece of data is also stored.
We recommend you generate work procedures outside DAD and then use the History Log to audit and enforce these. This approach offers flexibility with
consistency.
There are simple built in tools that allow users to check for duplicate names and data consistency within the model.
LINKING EXTERNAL FILES FOR EASY REFERENCE
Users can attach external files to any object in the model. This feature is a convenient way of allowing immediate access to references such as:
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manufacturers' data sheet
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photo of the installation
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test record
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maintenance report
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calculations.
PUBLISHING
Any body of data in DAD can be published as a PDF file (or exported as a .DGN or .DWG script file).
The DAD workpad can contain many levels each showing some different aspect of the model. These can all be published by the user.
Published files are stored within the Document View in DAD. They can be opened there.
Each document has a full audit history similar to other object in the model.
Document title blocks can be fully configured by the user. Document title consistency is achieved by using self-source look up fields.
To facilitate change management in the mode when a document is published links are made to store:
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in any component the documents that it has been published on
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in any connector the documents that contain it
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in any document the components and connectors that it displays.
Published documents can be opened for editing by the user. When this is done:
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a new workpad opens showing the content of the document as a view on the model ready for editing
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any data in the active layer that has been modified will be have been updated in this display
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any tabular data from a spreadsheet will be updated with current data when it is re-opened and used to replace the existing table
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when this is republished the title detail will be retained.
EXPORTING DATA FROM DAD
There are utilities to export data for use in other DAD models.
I&E Systems will build SQL Views that allow users to query the DAD model from external applications. This manner of linking DAD to other database
applications has significant advantages:
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low cost to create
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simple for the user to extend or change the data exchange.