One stop production under one roof

Global Creatures, an international entertainment group with its team of elites stationed in Melbourne, Australia, develops new and exciting theatrical productions to take to audiences around the world. Its animatronics elites, The Creature Technology Company (CTC) represents the cutting edge of innovative animatronics.

Initially established to create full-scale naturalistic dinosaurs for Walking with Dinosaurs – the Arena Spectacular, the company now designs and builds extra-ordinary creatures for theatrical productions around the world.

Animatronics Innovation

Creature Technology CompanyCost and time savings for cutting edge technology

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The company occupies one of the largest animatronics workshops

in the world and operates through highly experienced team of

designers, technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers,

puppeteers, sculptors, welders, sewers, fabricators and

painters.

Complete functionality for animatronics design

Having complete in-house production, engineers in CTC does large scale electrical production from Creature Technology Performance Control System to Safety PLC System, Motor and Hydraulic Control System, RT Transceivers and not to be missed, Power Contactors, Switches and detailed cabling system. Design complexity substantiate and these innovative producers require a powerful engineering design tool that exceeded the old software capabilities which could keep up with CTC’s extortionate demand.

A switch to EPLAN Electric P8 in 2010 was proven successful as this intelligent software offers full interoperability solutions from automatic cross referencing to complete and accurate parts management. EPLAN software eliminates the fundamental data-exchange barriers which is time consuming and tremendously improved the quality of files translated that impacted high delivery schedules and profits maximization for CTC.

Productivity enhanced with quality schematics design

With the growing complexity of design work, CTC began to gain advantage from the interoperability solutions offered in EPLAN Electric P8 Select. EPLAN‘s software has the capability to support numerous data through the common database. It has been build to store all part numbers for the various components in the design. The automatic cross referencing functions offered ease of convenience in designing schematics and data accuracy is constantly guaranteed.

Editing terminal and connector parameters in a complete tabulation allows for rapid data input and sharing of documentation across divisions is now a simple task. CTC has now achieved cost effectiveness and has assured its engineering competitiveness through the automated Bill of Materials (BOM) reporting. This furnishes the right amount of information on the required components and cables which make ordering and procurement easy.

GreaterData accuracy with EPLAN Electric P8

Integration of hydraulics systems

Currently applying EPLAN Electric P8, CTC is planning for further deployment for its engineering design work with the integration of its massive hydraulic systems using EPLAN Fluid. Numerous hydraulics systems is required in producing lively creatures movement and EPLAN’s interoperable solutions provides a perfect platform for these applications.

While maintaining multiple CAD systems can be cost prohibitive and does not necessarily solved the problem, the sharing of same database for both EPLAN Electric P8 and EPLAN Fluid module provides a huge time saver. Data are freely exchangeable and transferable and CTC can simply pullout required data from the library onto its schematics while its outcome and data accuracy are guaranteed.

Accrediting benefits of EPLAN Electric P8

The engineering team in CTC uses EPLAN application massively in designing Creature Technology Performance control systems. Often, the controllers have repetitive systems and thanks to the continuous software development and technology advancements, EPLAN Macro Technology eliminates the entire work redundancies. Being in such a creative industry, valuable human resources can now be maximized in developing new cutting edge technology.

“EPLAN has helped immensely both in the concept/ design stages and with preparing final documentation for the end user. Along with this, being able to provide accurate and easy to follow schematics to technicians has sped up installation time and made fault finding simple.”

inteGrationofEPLAN Fluid

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“Once established with EPLAN software, the Time taken to

generate schematic drawings has improved substantially,

ultimately resulting in reduced production cost.”

Animatronics Innovation

Touring around National Tours in Australia, the United States, Europe and Asia, CTC recently won widespread acclaim during two sell-out tours in Australia and America and was one of the biggest shows ever seen in New Zealand based on the award-winning BBC TV series “Walking With Dinosaurs”, The Arena Spectacular. Its strategic alliance with DreamWorks keeps CTC ahead of its competitors and further strengthens its foothold in the animatronics and enter-tainment industry. Patrons who wish to have a glimpse of a Dinosaur can visit the Melbourne Museum as its creatures are being exhibited in the hall.

The quality of after sales support and services between The Creature Technology designers and EPLAN representative are the Main essence in forging a closer rela-tionship. “We always obtained very fast and friendly service from our EPLAN representatives and are constantly and promptly updated about EPLAN software Applications”, say David, Head of Creature Controls.

Find out more about The Creature Technology on www.creaturetechnology.com

SummarySuccessful

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EPLAN Competence Centre S.E.A. . Australia info@eplan.com.my . www.eplan.com.my

Published in 2011