Renewable Energy Systems

Harness The Power Of AutoCAD Civil 3D

Renewable Energy Systems Ltd is a global success story developing building and running wind farms across three continents. The company had always been a long term Autodesk user and it was a logical step to investigate Autodesk’s solution especially designed for civil work – Autodesk Civil 3D.

The Challenge

Surveys have shown that wind power has overwhelming public support - but planners naturally have to be careful and take many factors into account. As a result, the three-person Kings Langley based team designing the infrastructure of the sites needed to be able to analyse and interrogate their designs in more details. This was particularly the case when creating the layout of the site such as the roads - often upgraded from farm tracks - to allow turbine delivery vehicles to get to the actual turbine locations.

Why Autodesk?

The company had always been an Autodesk user. Therefore it was a logical step to investigate Autodesk's solution especially designed for civil work - AutoCAD Civil 3D. Now the team is able to bring in a topographical survey of the site into Civil 3D and produce a surface from this. They then enter the initial planning layout for the tracks and the location of the turbines, putting these in as alignments. This then enables them to check the gradients. Gradients are crucial - especially as by the very nature of wind farms, they are almost always in remote locations and on steep hilly sites. Civil 3D's powerful dynamic engineering model means that changes made in one place are reflected instantly throughout the entire project. Design elements, visualisations, analysis and plans stay in perfect synchronisation so that changes can be made quickly while, at the same time, accuracy is maintained.

The Benefit

  • Significant savings in time
  • Ease of making changes whilst maintaining accuracy
  • Increased productivity
  • Increased competitiveness

"We are now looking at larger commercial projects as well as developing our residential portfolio. The way Autodesk has increased our productivity has played a key role in this."

Michael Whitbread, CAD Manager, RES Ltd.

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