Telecommunications companies and their suppliers by definition work with complex products and systems. Even if you manufacture a circuit, a wire or a headset, your product is sold in the context of an overall system and so the role of your product in that system must be understood.
The person designing the overall system usually does so by drawing schematics that show the overall composition of the telecommunications system as well as more detailed drawings such as wiring schematics. They might also draw floor plans that show how communications and electrical equipment will be placed in their use environment. This can be done with a drawing tool, such as Microsoft Visio, which has special stencils created for electrical diagrams. A smart drawing tool such as Visio can really facilitate the drawing task, but the knowledge of which shapes should be dragged and dropped, and how shapes should be connected, must come from the engineer doing the work. Every new design is a brand new challenge, usually started by pulling out an old drawing that is close in requirements to the current assignment and salvaging what applies to the new situation.
Any validation procedures are in a separate step, during a review process, or perhaps during implementation when it is discovered that something just doesn't work. Design changes occur at that time, and add cost to the project.
Apprentice Systems has a special focus on electrical systems engineering, the creation of wiring schematics and the automatic racking of electrical equipment. We build on the Visio electrical stencils, and make the Visio shapes even smarter by adding your component data. We also create custom Visio shapes to represent necessary components in the system. The user can be prompted to provide information on requirements when a generic shape is dragged and dropped on the page. A component is automatically selected from the database to meet the given requirements. If a suitable component cannot be found, the Apprentice will tell you which requirement is not being met, and allow you to either relax the requirement or enter a new component in the database.
Ancillary components necessitated by an element of the design can be automatically added.
Electrical equipment that is placed in racks can be automatically arranged to optimize space and wire usage. Optimal wire routing can be calculated in the context of a floor plan and the appropriate wire lengths generated.
Validation of the correctness of components and their connections can be done continuously or on demand, based on your preference. Either way, validation occurs before a drawing is released to a customer or for implementation, saving time and money down the line.
The Apprentice can also be designed to infer rules from existing and new designs, allowing the Apprentice to learn and adapt over time.
And finally, the Apprentice automatically generates the necessary bills of materials and other detailed drawings to facilitate implementation.
