Monthly Archives: November 2014

High Five

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The use of the expression “High Five” began in the early 70’s and it was a form of saying “way to go” for an accomplishment no matter how small or large. With this in mind, let’s take a moment to talk about one of the characteristics that also describes our software:

User Friendly | Drilling Software - Pegasus Vertex, Inc.

User-friendliness is the ease of use and learnability of a man-made object for humans to interact with, for example, a software, website, tool and a machine just to mention a few. User-friendly includes procedures of measuring usability, such as needs analyses and studies of the principles behind an object’s efficiency. When designing a software, the elegance and the clarity of its interaction with users are very essential.

The primary idea of user-friendly is divided in 3 categories:

  1. More efficient to use - it  takes less time to accomplish a particular task
  2. Easier to learn - any operation can be learned by observing the object
  3. More satisfying to use

Complex software programs find their way into everyday life and this has made user-friendly more popular in recent years, as more companies see the benefits of researching and developing their software with user-oriented methods instead of technology-oriented methods only.

The term user-friendly is often used as a synonym for usable and also refers to accessibility. It’s a description of the quality user experience. By understanding the interaction between the software and the user, we at PVI, work toward providing our customers with what they’re looking for.

When we think of user-friendly we focus on the following:

  1. Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they use the software?
  2. Efficiency: Once users have learned the software, how fast can they complete tasks?
  3. Memorability: When users return to the software after a period of not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
  4. Errors: How many errors do users make and how easily can they recover from the errors?
  5. Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the software?

User-friendly is associated with the functionalities of our software; in addition to being just a characteristic of the user interface it also separates usefulness into usability and utility. When we evaluate user interfaces for usability and utility, our definition is as simple as: effective fit for purpose and efficiency of the Interface. The term intuitive is also a fitting trait in our user-friendly interfaces, because it’s used as a synonym for learnable; where our users can learn advanced software in a very simple manner.

So basically what we want is for our customers to feel so accomplished when finishing a job that at the end of the day before they turn off their computer they say to our software: “Way to go…high five!”

Visual Thinking Equals Creativity

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Logical and visual thinking are two different mental groups that affect the way we view things.

The logical thinking involves analysis, advancement from simple to complex, organization of information and continuous reasoning. This group is influenced by hearing and language and a perception of time.

In contrast, visual thinking involves synthesis, an intuitive comprehension of complex systems, coordinated processing of concepts, inductive reasoning from the whole aspect to the small aspects, use of imagination and generation of ideas by combining existing facts in new ways, in other words, creative thinking. This group is influenced by visualization and images and a perception of space.

For the visual thinking group, concepts are rapidly understood when presented with visuals. Once the spatial thinking group has an image of a concept and sees how the information fits with what they already know, their learning ability is permanent. It’s their best learning style. To them, images are their main motivation and it is how they experience success in their own way. With this in mind, here at Pegasus Vertex, Inc. we put a lot of effort into our software development to give our clients a sophisticated visual experience of what goes on below the ground and under the sea. We use diverse visualizations, such as schematics and graphs that provide a live feed of the operations.

Highly Visual | PVI Drilling Software

Visual thinking is one of our main focuses when creating the software.

Why?

Because visuals are a more effective way in understanding the goals of the project, whether it is mud reporting, drilling hydraulics, casing wear prediction, cementing jobs, wellbore trajectory, tubing movement or split flow analysis. With creativity we give our customers the software that fits their needs.

Highly Visual | Drilling Software - Pegasus Vertex, Inc.

Safety-Minded Pilot

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Pilots who fly planes or any type of aircraft have a preflight inspection checklist consisting of more than 30 items. If the pilots do not carefully follow the checklist each time before take-off, they increase the possibility of a tragic accident. Do you know what type of pilot is specially urged to complete the checklist every time? It is the very experienced pilot! A seasoned pilot could easily skip some of the details thinking nothing is going to happen, but an experienced one takes this checklist very seriously.

Like a safety-minded pilot, service companies and drilling engineers make survey calculations that are fundamental and necessary to monitor and control wellbore trajectories. Initially, the oil and gas industry was concentrated on drilling vertical wells. The concept of inclination angle began when engineers realized that a drilled wellbore trajectory was not a plumb line. Then the concept of azimuth angle arose when they found out that a drilled trajectory can deviate from a vertical well. A wellbore trajectory is a continuous curve in space that bends and turns simultaneously.

The oil and gas industry has acknowledged the importance of survey calculation for more than 50 years and has extensively applied the research results in the field. Inclinometers can only give parameters from separate survey stations and cannot give the real profile of a wellbore trajectory. Therefore, a proper method of survey calculation must be on the basis of a 3D wellbore trajectory model. A software with the help of simple methods can be sufficiently accurate and precise for these types of well such as extended-reach wells and multi-target wells.

By combining the survey calculations with visualization technology, PVI has developed PathView (Well Path Visualization) which provides an interactive, true 3D view of single and multiple wells.PathView - Well Path Visualization Software

Some of the features included in PathView are:

  • True 3D-rendered wellpath visualization
  • Anti-collision calculation
  • Surface lease lines
  • Lithology
  • Up to 5000 rows of survey data
  • Plots specified wellbore range
  • Up to 10 sidetrack levels
  • Plots and prints detailed well profiles
  • Plan view, Section view, 3D view and Dogleg

Precautionary methods are an effective way for safety-minded pilots to buy time to reevaluate the flight conditions. Pilots, who understand their aircraft systems, follow standard operating procedures and use conservative risk management techniques, will diminish inconvenient situations from further becoming worse; just like the ability to see the well path in a 3D work space is essential for engineers to visualize the development plan, understand it and therefore, avoid well collisions.

The Whole Package in a Small Package

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The phrase “The Whole Package” is defined as:

  1. All the elements constituting a whole or occurring as a unit.
  2. Something or someone that possesses a full set of relevant characteristics.

This expression is often used to describe something that is of good choice; something that has everything that one needs for a specific matter or something that possesses all that one is searching for.

With all the advancements technology has achieved, it is marvelous how it keeps evolving in ways that are far beyond describable. Now you can have computer programs that can do multitasks; for instance, a software that possesses a full set of relevant characteristics for a specific need. It is literally getting the whole package in a small package.

The Whole Package in a Small Package

Let’s talk about one good example of this.

DEPRO, a software developed by PVI, is a complete torque, drag and hydraulics program that combines all the essential components of our TADPRO and HYDPRO software.

For torque and drag, this software eliminates and diminishes a lot of the risks in drilling, completion or any particular tool operations. It also performs comprehensive hydraulics calculations so that the downhole drilling hydraulic conditions can be examined, and potential problems can be identified in advance before field execution.

Among its many features DEPRO also includes:

  • Soft and stiff string models
  • Buckling criteria
  • Drilling, back reaming, rotating and tripping operations
  • Minimum WOB to buckle
  • Stress calculations
  • 2D/3D animations
  • Liner cementing job
  • Field data comparisons on torque, drag, ECD and SPP
  • Fixed flow rate analysis
  • Surge and swab
  • Hydraulics sensitivity analysis
DEPRO - Torque, Drag and Hydraulics

This is a good package for service companies and operators in which they can find everything that they need for their jobs to be done all in one place. In other words they can have the whole package in a small package.