Many utilities and consulting organizations want to learn how to configure AUD so they can adapt it to their specific needs without long term reliance on consultants for support. DL Consulting literally wrote the book, and in 2015 released the only commercial training manual and course. Since then, DL Consulting has delivered configuration training to dozens of clients worldwide.

Over the years our approach has evolved to better meet client needs. Most trainings now follow this outline:

  • Client background: The client first presents their goals and provides details of how projects are done, information on their material catalog and standards library, examples of design drawings, and sample design deliverables. This enables us to understand how to prioritize training content and examples.
  • Sample configuration: The trainer then starts by walking through a sample configuration. This includes discussion of what is similar and different between the example and the client’s design process.
  • Configuration topics: The bulk of the training then focuses on areas of configuration. For each configuration topic we consider:
    • The basic mechanics of configuration
    • The sample configuration is used to illustrate how this topic area is interrelated with other configuration elements.
    • The topic is discussed in the context of the client utility. This allows the trainer to surface things that are unique to the utility that will need to be addressed in a configuration.
  • Hands-on work: On some configuration areas, the participants work through a hands-on exercise or example using their data and their utility requirements to fully understand how the particular configuration topic works.
  • Starter configuration: Depending on the available data the the various skills among the participants, work may begin on a “starter configuration” where the participants do some of the work with assistance from the trainer.

Most training sessions then end with planning for next steps.

The page on this website covering Configuration Assistance provides a list of many of the configuration topics covered in a configuration training.