“We don't have an engineer on staff but being able to plug our info into Design Master… I couldn’t do it any other way,” said Bill Ross. “There's just no way I would have the capability to do that.”
Bill is the president of Lake Shore Electric, Inc., a design-build electrical contracting business, founded in 1982 in Yakima, Washington. The family-owned and operated business works with all types of projects including cold storage, packing lines, commercial office buildings, and retail and warehouses.
With a passion for innovation, Bill started using AutoCAD starting with its first setup in 1995. Despite the initial challenges of teaching himself how to use it, he worked through it and successfully incorporated AutoCAD into the company’s workflow.
Fast forward to 2017, and the shift to subscription-based models by Autodesk caused Bill to begin considering new software collections to replace AutoCAD, including Revit.
Although he preferred Revit over everything else, there were some areas where it just didn’t do all that he needed, and it certainly didn’t fit his needs as well as AutoCAD. But rather than go back to that, he thought it might be time to look for something to help make Revit better.
While Revit did offer promising features, it was the integration of ElectroBIM that really caught Bill's attention.
“Revit had a lot more capabilities, but it just didn't fill out everything that we needed compared to AutoCAD,” Bill said. “I liked the way Revit lays out and then saw the Design Master product and did a trial, and it definitely checked a lot of boxes for us that made it a lot more streamlined to what we do.”
The enhanced electrical capability ElectroBIM offered, especially in areas like arc fault and fault current analysis, elevated Bill’s design capabilities and settled Revit as the primary design tool. Design Master not only met but exceeded all expectations, providing diverse calculations and streamlining processes that enhanced the quality of the work.
“First, it's getting used to Revit and how to deal with that”, Bill said, “and then with Design Master, it's actually pretty simple… it's been great.”
Bill highlighted how a team member with zero AutoCAD experience seamlessly got up to speed with Revit and ElectroBIM, emphasizing the intuitive "building" approach over traditional "drawing."
The decision to embrace ElectroBIM came from specific needs in Lake Shore’s projects, particularly in areas like panel schedules and electrical calculations.
Bill knows that their commitment to true design-build practices sets them apart from competitors, with ElectroBIM playing a crucial role in delivering accurate and comprehensive materials for complex industrial projects.
As an early adopter of ElectroBIM updates, he eagerly awaits new features and functionalities, always striving to leverage the latest tools to enhance Lake Shore’s design capabilities further.
