Early Innovation within Syska Hennessy: SHCadd
Innovation within Syska Hennessy Group is not new. Over the years many within our organization have felt the need to create something better, embark on the unknown, to do something that had not been done before. For example, we transitioned to AutoCAD in the late 1980s. This was a time before AutoCAD verticals such as Architectural Desktop and Building Systems and long before Revit was ever even thought of. The AutoCAD platform transitioned manual drafters from pencil, erasers, and paper to digital computer-aided drafting. There was obvious immediate value seen in not having to manually erase lines or sharpen pencils, not to mention the ease of duplicating objects and sheets. However, when it came to laying out and making modifications to MEP systems that were nothing more than lines, circles, and arcs, the overall efficiency was diminished as there was a lot of work and rework along with tedious picks and clicks.
Syska Hennessy Engineers – Copyright SH Group.
The early CAD team within Syska quickly saw the need for improvement, and in the mid 90s embarked on an ambitious effort to create a better way to design and edit drawings. This small team started with a deep dive into the common programming scripts of AutoLISP and some basic VBA to develop what came to be known as SHCadd. This was a bundle of utilities and scripts to assist with the cleanup of CAD files for use as backgrounds, and shortcuts to initialize groups of commands and discipline specific workflows to create elements such as Flex duct, conduit, double-line and single-line ductwork, pipe, and labels.
Some longtime team members had the following to say when they think back to that “Golden Era” of SHCadd:
“SHCadd seemed to follow a simple idea make the designer’s and CAD operator’s jobs more efficient by reducing picks and clicks in AutoCAD.”
“It was ahead of its time, prepping drawings for our use was effortless and automated.”
“It was an innovative idea that really helped to save time and enabled many who did not use AutoCAD on a regular basis to be able to create and modify systems easily and put things on the right layer.”
For years our advancement with SHCadd was a real benefit to the firm and even came to be used as a recruiting tool: Engineers could see how this would save so much time in the tedious drafting process. At the time we decided to keep this as an in-house advantage and not commercialize it; however, Autodesk eventually came to developed its own approach to MEP systems on its platform.
Therefore, as with all good things, SHCadd eventually came to an end. New versions of AutoCAD became more difficult to customize and our in-house expertise with AutoLISP became more difficult to maintain, so we decided to investigate the Autodesk verticals, which included many utilities similar to what were developing, and some greatly enhanced components of MEP systems, which ultimately influenced our decision to move to Autodesk Building Systems, which eventually became AutoCAD MEP.
SHCadd, R.I.P. it was a great nearly 10-year run! On to bigger and better innovations.
Written By Albert Alderete