Connecting engineering applications without a weekly spreadsheet
Engineering offices live in several applications because the jobs differ: geometry in CAD, load flow in an analysis package, bills in a spreadsheet, correspondence in a document pile. Pain starts when the same object — a breaker, a luminaire, a cable — is typed three times and then diverges. Connecting applications means an explicit mapping: identity, units, required fields, and what happens when one side has a row the other cannot represent. That is application integration as we practise it.
How the investigation is actually run
List objects and fields on each side of the proposed bridge before anyone writes a connector. Mark the authoritative source per field. Mark units. Mark what happens when a row exists only on one side. Prototype on a single feeder or a single lighting layout so a wrong mapping cannot stain a campus. Keep the mapping in a file people can review, not in an opaque click-path.
Round-trips that overwrite manual CAD cleanup are a design defect. Export buttons plus hope are not integration. Shared identity is the entire problem: if two tools cannot point at the same breaker, they will drift. Conflicts should print as a list, not as a drawing that looks finished.
When the mapping is stable, the weekly spreadsheet can die. Until then, keep the spreadsheet and tell the truth. A larger system of record is a different product; do not smuggle it into a bridge project.
Symptoms
Single-lines that do not match the model. Lighting schedules that do not match the drawing. Hours spent reconciling names. The ETAP–AutoCAD problem is the worked example: data bridge project note.
Causes
No shared key. Different families of devices. Round-trip that overwrites manual CAD cleanup. “Integration” that is actually an export button plus hope. Related decision: when automation is worth building.
Investigation
List objects and fields on each side. Mark authoritative source per field. Prototype on a small circuit, not the whole campus. Prefer a checked-in mapping file over hidden logic. Larger ambition to hold documents and workflows together is a different product shape: EE-Platform.
Outcome of a good bridge: the same equipment identity in both tools, conflicts visible instead of silent, and a refusal to invent values the source did not give.