Planning for ILC success through shared databases
Participants in the five-day course at Fermilab.*
Designing, building and operating the ILC will require an unprecedented level of world-wide collaboration. To make this possible, collaborators will use a shared Electronic Data Management System. This will allow them to contribute, extract and edit live data in real time. A pilot EDMS, set up by DESY in Hamburg, is already in use by the ILC cryomodule design team. Its success will provide a model for other ILC databases.
This week Fermilab hosted a five-day training course for scientists, physicists and engineers in the use of the design database. This database will allow all engineering data to be shared amongst the collaboration in real time. This is a first.
"In the past everyone had their own models and drawings, which could be shared through downloading," said Don Mitchell, who taught the classes. "But by then, if the design is changing, it is obsolete. This database allows us to always be working with current, live data."
Don Mitchell, a mechanical engineer in the technical division, is the design team leader for the ILC's cryomodules. The design team is made of scientists, engineers and designers from INFN Milan, INFN Pisa, KEK and Fermilab. This week representatives from each institution learned how to use the database interface, how to design with CAD software and how to use the visualization software (VisView). VisView displays CAD data as two and three dimensional models, enabling the whole ILC community to view the design and specifications of ILC hardware.
"The exciting thing about this class is that it is the first instance of using an integrated database, where people can use live data concurrently," said Mitchell. "It's time for everyone in the ILC community to start thinking about what it will take for their institute to use one database. This pilot program is a success story."
Early in 2007 DESY will launch the official ILC CAD database.
--D. A. Venton
*Top picture, from left: Don Mitchell, FNAL;
Chuck Grimm, FNAL;
Serena Barbanotti, INFN Milan;
Maurizio Massa, INFN Pisa;
Paolo Pierini, INFN Milan; Andrea Basti, INFN Pisa;
Nicola Panzeri, INFN Milan; Norio Higashi, KEK; and
Norihito Ohuchi, KEK.
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