According to statistics, the construction industry still represents a significant portion of workplace accidents. The new package, directed at building site staff, and can be used in self-training, or by health and safety instructors as visual aids that complement their existing documents.
MethoCAD says that its latest 3D virtual reality software allows users to recognise themselves and identify with the characters and the building site environment. By using three dimensions plus audio, MethoCAD says the viewer is much more likely to take on-board that accidents are always possible and, subsequently, be more conscious of risks and how they can be minimised.
Cranes accidents are said by MethoCAD to be among the most frequent ones, so the package emphasises cranes misuses and illustrates how to operate them, and work in their presence, in the safest way.
A specific MethoCAD crane software package is said by the firm to have been used successfully for 20 years by construction contractors and crane rental companies. Using the crane database including most of the crane data used on the market and thousands of AutoCAD blocks, the software draws automatically the crane layout in top and front views along with loads curves and checks the minimum clearance checking when cranes are free standing.
A brand new feature added to the crane specific software package, being shown at Intermat 2012, involves crane lifting capacities and loads. In the process of selecting a crane, the maximum crane lifting capacity and the jib nose maximum lifting load are checked. However, in many cases there will be loads situated at different positions on the site requiring a crane with higher capacity.
With the MethoCAD software, the different loads can be positioned on the drawing, allowing distances to the loads to be determined automatically. A table is then produced summarising the maximum loads and distances from the crane location. As all the crane data is stored in the MethoCAD database, it is then possible to search for the crane matching the different loads requirements, easily read from the table produced.
Hall: 4 Stand: J097
