INFA, the engineering, construction and manufacturing company that provides custom, on-site mineral processing at a large Gold and Silver mine in the Santa Cruz region of Argentina, explains how the engineering team uses 3D PDF to improve communications with clients when sharing 3D CAD designs for custom Gold & Silver processing plants.
“We mostly send 3D PDF documents to our customers to avoid heavy DWG files – it’s pretty useful in that way. On mining infrastructure projects, we frequently sent 3D designs of equipment, piping and 3D layouts/arrangements of the mining processing plant,” commented Gaspar Ezequiel Vergani, Mechanical Engineering Draughtsman at INFA. “In fact we also use 3D PDF in oil and gas, and aluminium factory designs. We face a big problem in our communication with clients located far away from our office just with 2D drawings. So when we send a 3D PDF this avoids needing specific software (they can see it with the free Adobe Reader), plus with a phone call we can make the client understand what we are saying in a much faster and easier way.” At the southern end of South America travel distance between sites is a real challenge.
The INFA Gold and Silver plant engineering project sits on the Deseado Massif in Santa Cruz Province, Southern Argentina. The Deseado Massif is predominantly formed by volcanic rocks of Jurassic age and is host to several epithermal gold and silver deposits. The area is well known for active hot springs and geothermal vents. With that terrain comes some big data.
“The size of DWG files ranged from a few Kb to over 100 Mb. For the more complex 3D files, the reduction in PDF was great when I used the PDF3D ReportGen Advanced setup simplification options,” explained Gaspar.
INFA actively uses Autodesk software for the industrial processing plant design work, specifically AutoCAD (classic, mechanical and civil), AutoCAD Plant 3D and Inventor. For Civil and BIM orientated projects INFA create 3D PDFs from TECKLA generated DWG files using PDF3D ReportGen.
“Using the Spanish language options in PDF3D ReportGen lets me concentrate on the important 3D design issues rather than the menus,” added Gaspar.
To engage social and educational interest in the communities outside of the INFA Company, Gaspar has used animated 3D PDFs within a PowerPoint presentation for a school exhibition event.
The INFA Engineering team includes 70 engineering professionals located near Buenos Aires and Chubut, with high levels of expertise with software for mechanical and civil engineering, architecture, piping, automation, networks and telecommunications, process and pre-commissioning.
For more information on INFA visit http://www.infa.com.ar/
