How Artura boosted design & development with graph visualization
Artura (Source: Artura B.V.)Artura B.V., operating as Thydel offers a sophisticated SaaS application helping users to create comprehensive system designs and proposals. Their mission is to revolutionize the world of audiovisual (AV), IT and security engineering. Thydel offers an intricate SaaS application aimed at system engineers, designers and sales personnel, the main focus being on AV, IT, Communications, Security, and Event systems for Super Yachts, Cruise, and large buildings. While dedicated to this niche sector, their expertise can be leveraged for other industries as well.
The inspiration behind the development of this application was having the tools and means available to create high quality documentation to ultimately achieve a frictionless engineering process. They see this as a major benefit to everyone involved and that it also drastically reduces costs and time to market.
Needs & objectives
Needs analysis
- Visualizing Complex Graph Logistics Aligning products and engineering within budgetary constraints through effective data visualization.
- Enhancing Engineering Deliverables Elevating quality and accuracy of documentation for smoother installations and programming.
- Streamlining Information Retrieval Efficiently accessing documents and drawings, reducing search-related time waste.
Objectives
- Building Trust in Tooling Ensuring accurate product alignment for clients through robust data visualization methods.
- Boosting Operational Efficiency Seamlessly integrating sales, design, and engineering processes for improved workflow.
- Facilitating Collaborative Insights Enabling teamwork via synchronized visualizations, enhancing project progress and cooperation.
Challenges paving the path for Artura's solution
One of the challenges they faced when designing their application was how to align products and engineering within budgetary constraints through effective data visualization. Additionally, their goal was to elevate the quality and accuracy of the documentation to achieve smoother installations and programming.
Artura (Source: Artura B.V.)Moreover, they required an optimized information retrieval system to significantly reduce the time invested in search. They were ultimately looking for a robust data visualization method to seamlessly integrate the sales, design, and engineering processes for an improved workflow.
And lastly, their objective was to enable teamwork via synchronized graphics, thereby enhancing project progress and cooperation.
Floor plan details (Source: Artura B.V.)In their quest for excellence, Artura found solace in yWorks’ suite of graph visualization solutions, more specifically yFiles. Their intricate requirements demanded interactive floor plans, rack layouts, and installation schematics; yFiles' features align perfectly with these requirements. Think of yFiles’ extensive APIs, its event-driven model, and its unparalleled flexibility in automatic layouts.
From Excel and AutoCAD to a completely different way of working
These days, Artura makes it easier and less time consuming for everyone involved in AV, IT projects by providing them with high quality documentation for the whole engineering process. Their biggest challenge was being able to cover all the angles of their clients’ requirements.
Starting with Excel (Source: Artura B.V.)Artura sought to improve the reliability of the engineering deliverables by creating a tool that offered exhaustive information to everyone involved. Thereby decreasing frustration, extra allocated time needed, and costs.
On a more technical note, they wanted to assure a continuous synchronization between the visuals and the database behind it. “Autocad, which is commonly used, still does not provide this guarantee, as it is not event based, ” van der Pouw Kraan clarifies.
Filter & Sorting (Source: Artura B.V.)Another aim was to make the search and retrieval process as painless and as least time consuming as possible. About working with traditional drawings, van der Pouw Kraan says: "It's a continuous drag to find what you need in the chaos of documents, you easily lose hours everyday on searching for what you need.” Thanks to the progressive new approach with interactive graph drawings, this problem is now a thing of the past.
Artura "Dashboard"“The main objectives were trust in tooling, increased operational efficiency, a seamless transition from sales/design to engineering, and enhanced collaboration,” says van der Pouw Kraan. Their graph needs were very specific. “We wanted to show 2D-floor plans with icons and equipment positions, but also rack layouts and installation schematics,” explains van der Pouw Kraan. Luckily, yFiles comes with a multitude of effortless graph layouts, making it easy to create intricate graph compositions. yFiles harnesses cutting-edge graph layout algorithms, showcasing advanced approaches for unparalleled diagram arrangement and visualization.
Empowering innovation: A Swift transition with yFiles
During the development of their POC they knew that their solution needed to be visually attractive and would have to consist of various features and elements. It all progressed smoothly and quickly after having discovered yFiles.
yFiles' impact
- Enhanced visualization
yFiles helps Artura make complex systems clearer and easier to understand. - Improved communication
yFiles visual diagrams facilitate collaboration between teams. - Streamlined processes
Enhanced visual diagramming improves design validation and error detection.
At this point they have reached a solid foundation while acknowledging that they can attain much more in the years to come. “We have received wonderful feedback about what we have and everyone seems to like the process and ease of use,” says van der Pouw Kraan, “But they are already pushing us to go some steps further, with requests for field of view purposes and elevation drawings, that show more details about how everything should be installed.” He adds that they are being pushed to scale up.
Cable settings (Source: Artura B.V.)Describing their use of the yFiles graph visualizations, van der Pouw Kraan specifies: A picture tells more than a thousand words, but to best describe it is: interactive floor plans, rack layouts, and installation schematics. A technical description of the software environment.”
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- Free support
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yFiles is known to be a highly efficient tool for creating highly professional diagram applications.
Connect cables between equipment locations (Source: Artura B.V.)yFiles also easily allows for functional design. “Functional design allows the user to generate a project context that allows for bulk assignments of products and cables, delivering a full engineering package where everything is consistent and accurate.”
Version control is another really useful feature offered by Artura. “This allows project stakeholders to easily see differences from where they left things the last time. It enables a full understanding of what is happening during the entire project lifetime,” according to van der Pouw Kraan.
While yFiles itself doesn't have version control features, it aligns well with version control systems commonly used in software development to ensure efficient collaboration and management of codebases that include yFiles integration. Artura had developed a preliminary version control feature and with the help of the experts at yWorks they were able to integrate this successfully in their finished application.
He explains how yFiles solved their pain points and which specific requirements it fulfilled. “Extensive API’s, event driven, enormous flexibility in automatic layouts, the massive amount of parameters for custom settings. And of course yFiles’ performance in the browser.”
According to him, yFiles benefits their end users in the following way: ”yFiles helps our users gain huge efficiency, usually our clients previously had to draw every single line, bend etc. manually without any guarantee they had the actual correct cable information. Now, you just connect it and yFiles does the layout quite nicely. Our motto is: Forget CAD, Artura draws the lines for you. And that is definitely because of yFiles.”
Because many of their applications require a custom-built solution, they turned to yFiles for support. “yWorks delivered great feedback and also gave our devs a thorough training on how to get started,” says van der Pouw Kraan. He also appreciates yWorks’ low response times even pertaining to highly complex inquiries.
Elevating excellence: Embracing success with yFiles integration
In short, Artura definitely attributes a significant part of its success to the integration of yFiles. Because of yFiles’ highly useful and uncommon features, Artura was able to outsource the whole diagramming expertise to yFiles. Thereby having more time and more ease of mind available to enhance their services.
With yFiles, Artura eliminated a lot of operational overhead, reduced costs, and they were able to purely focus on their core business operations rather than having to extend beyond their expertise.
But essentially, Artura was able to integrate yFiles into their tool and deliver their customers an advanced SaaS-application that would have been impossible without this synergy. In addition, because yFiles is a white label software product, Artura gained several other benefits when they chose yFiles for their visualizational needs.
yFiles benefits
About Artura B.V.
Artura B.V. brings state-of-the-art engineering software for various use cases, from automated homes to building superyachts. It’s a complete platform for system integrators.
Artura automates and simplifies a lot of the system engineering tasks, thereby eliminating concerns and cutting costs.
Thanks to its expertise in data integration they are able to reduce build time of massive and complex build projects by 10%.
The engineering time even reduces by up to 50% compared to conventional methods.
Artura powers any system integration project, from homes to superyachts. It's intuitive, collaborative, and saves time with automation and a single source of truth. Plus, Artura's expert support helps you nail every project.
Overwhelmingly loved by clients, Artura is always evolving to stay ahead. Simplify excellence with Artura.
