– Instead of spending time correcting mistakes, we can spend time creating our own solutions. RailCOMPLETE is simple and unbelievably advanced at the same time. This is fun to work with, says Svein Magnus Furu, consulting engineer at Multiconsult..

He was one of the first in Multiconsult to adopt RailCOMPLETE.

“We heard about RailCOMPLETE from our network and started testing it. We liked it, and we have been fully using it for about three years”, Furu says.

Multiconsult is one of Norway’s and Scandinavia’s leading consulting companies within architecture, technical consultancy and planning. Of the many subject areas, the area of ​​Transport and Mobility is central, which, among other elements, involves designing of railway solutions and stations.

“We had an early opportunity to test the solution. The developers have kept in touch and listened to many of our suggestions. Being able to take part in the process of developing the system at the same time as we work on projects has been a slightly different way of thinking. It has been very useful”, Furu says.

An elegant solution

Designing and developing solutions for railways is an extremely interdisciplinary process with many areas to be adapted between eachother. Lots of objects within the various subject areas must be placed and coordinated, and adjustments take place continuously in the design process.

“In the past, we have spent a lot of time designing drawings and models. It was a very manual process with a huge risk of errors. We used ‘dumb’ systems that didn’t talk to each other, where everything had to be entered manually. RailCOMPLETE solves this in a very elegant way”, Furu says.

“When you now make changes, you do it in a central database, and all elements in the system are automatically updated. This means that a substantial part of the process that was previously manual has been automated. At the same time, we have removed many sources of errors. This is a great strength of the system”, he adds.

Changes are made automatically

Multiconsult uses the system from RailCOMPLETE primarily for the design of overhead catenary systems (OCS) and earthing. A central part of designing a railway with all elements and objects is to create a three-dimensional CAD representation.

“The part of the program that creates a 3D representation is closely linked to the database. You thereby avoid a lot of ‘fiddling’, for example when moving an OCS pole. Now you can just change numerical values, and everything will update. If you move an OCS pole by three meters, then the many other items who are dependent must be adapted. Before, as mentioned, this had to be done manually – now, it is done automatically”.

Furu explains that he once did a test to check how long it took him to make an exact replica of a three kilometer long railway catenary network – in both 2D and 3D.

“It took a tenth of the usual time to get to an 80 percent level of quality, and that is very good”, Furu says.

“Does this mean that projects can also become less expensive to implement?”

“Yes, it does. We see this as a competitive advantage for us. Companies that use RailCOMPLETE have a competitive edge over those who don’t, simply because of the achieved quality. With RailCOMPLETE, we have good control over data quality, and our data are always up to date”, Furu says.

Some errors and a lot of positive sides

RailCOMPLETE is relatively new. It is developed in collaboration with the end users, which is a collaboration form with various challenges for users.

“The system is fun to work with because it’s fun to obtain results quickly, a joy that is probably inherent in most people. But there are some frustrations and challenges here too. It’s not all ‘gold’, but there is a lot that is very positive”, Furu says.

“Where do you think RailCOMPLETE can improve?”

“Working with RailCOMPLETE is a little different from other systems. We are closely involved in the development process. While this ensures rapid release of new features, it also leads to buggy releases which requires us to find workarounds until such bugs have been rectified”, Furu says.

He nevertheless summarizes that users have good control over objects and data, and the time to obtain OK data quality in a model is short.

The benefits of RailCOMPLETE (R)

RailCOMPLETE® is an AutoCAD® plug-in for planning railway systems with a high level of detail. We combine the planning of control and safety technology, overhead lines, track systems, cable ducts, low-voltage systems and earthing in one tool. Since 2015, we have been working tirelessly and passionately to revolutionise the world of planning tools and deliver real added value to our customers. With RailCOMPLETE, we want to make our contribution to the modernisation of the rail industry, digital planning processes and the achievement of uniform standards in the European rail market.

We have come a long way in recent years and have continuously improved and expanded RailCOMPLETE. In the meantime, the tool has a range of functions that partially automate the planning process for control and safety technology and overhead contact line systems.

This has not gone undetected in the railway industry: Our first customer was the engineering service provider Norconsult AS in Norway, which is still Railcomplete AS’ largest customer. Since then, the companies Sweco and Multiconsult have joined. These three companies are leaders in overhead contact line planning in Norway. Norconsult is also a planning office in the field of control and safety technology for mainline railway.

Cooperations with SNCF, Deutsche Bahn and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. have already demonstrated the benefits of RailCOMPLETE far beyond the Norwegian borders.

InnoTrans is the world’s largest trade fair for transport technology. Every two years, Berlin becomes the meeting place for the industry to present innovations, to explore new trends and to exchange ideas.

Over the past few years, RailCOMPLETE has been continuously expanded and improved in terms of function, scope and user experience. We will present the results of our work and the possibilities in planning processes using RailCOMPLETE at two demo stands.

We will give an introduction to the tool and show how RailCOMPLETE can save time in the planning process, minimise errors and save personnel resources on the basis of concrete use cases.

Since 2015, we at Railcomplete AS have been working tirelessly to make our vision for planning tools in the railway market come true: all relevant planning projects around the railway line, united in one tool. With our version update 2022.2 we have come one step closer to this goal.

The history of RailCOMPLETE is characterised by continuous improvements and extensions to our software – the tool already has a large number of functions that partially automate the planning process for control and safety technology and catenary systems. With the version update 2022.2, we are again improving the user experience and expanding our functions: Large models are accelerated and we introduce a new interface for the 3D representation of point objects and alignment objects.

3D graphics can be broken down into smaller parts and then parametrically reassembled to display an object in 3D.

An example of how this can look is shown below with a light pole, which at the same time provides a glimpse of the upcoming NO-BN-DNA-2022.a update:

One patch – many possibilities

With RC version 2022.2, the possibilities for the users become more transparent and at the same time considerably expanded. In the new version, only those commands are displayed that are available for the respective license level of the user.

We have also added advanced settings for OffsetProfiles and a profile offset that moves the PVIs orthogonally to the source.

RailCOMPLETE 2022.2 and a detailed list of all function changes can be downloaded from www.railcomplete.com/rcdl.

– RailCOMPLETE provides a high degree of automation and streamlining of processes. In many areas, the program helps to save time, says experienced senior engineer Knut Atle Stene Andersen at Norconsult.  

– With RailCOMPLETE as the central repository for the data, and with the programming of the tables in RailCOMPLETE, the quality has improved compared to the more manual work processes we used to do. But most importantly, the time it takes to produce drawings has gone down significantly, says senior engineer Stene Andersen.  

Tight deadlines and strict rules

Knut Atle Stene Andersen has been working with overhead contact lines and railway since 1993. In 2010 he started with the project management of such installations and has since then participated in several large projects in connection with the electrification and upgrading of the Norwegian railway. These days he is central in the work on the drawings for the electrification of the Trønder and Meråker railway, assignment “ETM”.  

This assignment is carried out as a subcontractor to NRC, which has a turnkey contract for Bane NOR. The section of railway line from Trondheim with the Tyholt tunnel and further east is approximately 120 km with single track and a dozen stations. The contract extends from Marienborg via Stavne-Leangbanen and from Trondheim station to Stjørdal station on the Nordlandsbanen, and from Hell station to Riksgrensen on the Meråkerbanen. There are no contact lines from before, and the railway line is characterized by many and sharp curves.  

– The project must be completed by November 2023. These are tight deadlines and strict regulations. RailCOMPLETE contributes to good implementation, says Stene Andersen.  

Saves a lot of time and reduces the possibility of errors

Stene Andersen and his colleagues at Norconsult are working on this extensive project. He checks wiring, equipment placement and dimensioning in accordance with Bane NOR’s extensive technical regulations, and that drawings and tables have the correct appearance and content. There are several hundred drawings in the project, both line drawings in scale 1:500 and 1:1000 for contact line installations, and there are earthing plans in scale. All drawings contain tables with hundreds of figures which of course must be correct.  

During the project, and once it is built, thousands of engineered objects must be reported to Bane NOR’s system for monitoring construction projects, and finally key data must be transferred to Bane NOR’s operational database, “Banedata”.  

In this assignment, foundation plans are not stored as drawings, instead, the XYZ object placement coordinates from RailCOMPLETE are transferred to NRC as data files. There are also no 3D models in this mission.  

-There are many processes and many possible sources of error in such a project. RailCOMPLETE contributes to an increased degree of automation and efficiency of the processes. But although it saves us time and reduces the risk of errors, it still requires considerable expertise to drive such a project forward, says Stene Andersen.  

Today we are making Norwegian Railway History – RailCOMPLETE is now capable of modeling tracks, switches, track vacancy detection sections, signal, via points and fictitious end points, and figures out the complex signaling system’s socalled interlocking tables by itself. These are detailed tables which describe the required state for switches and track sections in order to allow a certain train route or shunting route to be set and the corresponding signals be set to ‘clear’.

This far we have developed support for generating train routes, shunting routes, extended train routes and extended shunting routes. The RailCOMPLETE development team now aims at producing all 20 interlocking table types according to the Norwegian Bane NORs design guidelines “Veileder for forriglingstabeller”.

The interlocking tables may be generated from a schematic as well as from a geographic RailCOMPLETE model.

Below you will find a fictitious railway station. The corresponding interlocking tables may be downloaded here.

Tired of spending countless hours of checking your railway drawings?

We are proud to announce that RailCOMPLETE objects now compute their own local model checks. Each time an object is used, refreshed or inspected, its model checks are re-evaluated. Model checking automates the tedious process of finding small and large inconsistencies in your model, or between your model and other discipline’s models.

In the example below (*) we have defined Error, Warning and OK distance intervals between neighboring balises in the up and down directions measured along the track. We have also introduced distance checks against balises in flyover tracks or in adjacent tracks. Looking for all objects with a problem is easily done from the Object Manager, in order to review and fix your model before delivery.

(*) ATC for the Bane NOR national rail administration, Norway.

The Manage Properties window shows this…

…when the AutoCAD modelspace shows this: