D3M recently had the opportunity to speak with Dick Varbero, systems designer at Icom America, a provider of communications devices across a broad spectrum of markets, including land mobile and marine. Dick explained how D3M is used within their day-to-day business activities and its associated benefits.
How long have you been working with two-way radios?
I've been working within the two-way radio industry for 30+ years.
What do your daily activities entail?
I am the systems designer and the main focal point for all of our sales activities regarding systems infrastructure, systems design and system solutions creation.
Who do you interact with on a daily basis?
Mainly, my sales staff.
Who within your organization is using D3M?
The sales staff is beginning to use the tool, while our executives currently use it for viewing purposes.
Prior to D3M, what tools were you using to design and document two-way radio networks?
Visio, Microsoft publisher, a variety of software packages – which led to creating a PDF in the end.
How does D3M compare to other tools you’ve used in the past?
It’s more centered around systems architecture, with the ability to demonstrate a fully connected system and all of its associated parts. This allows people who are not familiar with systems design to have an understanding of how the system will work.
Where did you first hear about D3M?
Through a colleague.
How can we better help you onboard to D3M?
I do struggle with some of the tool’s operation characteristic, but have been working with the D3M support team to address these issues.
What feature of D3M makes your life easier?
The icon libraries – once I have those I can easily drag and drop them into the diagram and connect them where needed. Being able to easily show where parts connect and label them accordingly is very helpful, it makes the systems design process much quicker.
Who else are you collaborating on documents with?
A few of us will make changes to projects, while the rest collaborate using the view only portion of the tool.
What do you like best about D3M?
The ability to switch between technical and non-technical views (icons on and off).
What do you find most frustrating about D3M?
The layers functionality, I am not sure how to use it or what it is for. Also I find when assigning ownership it does not always function correctly. Sometimes when ownership is assigned it does not save correctly within the app, which can be a bit frustrating.
Do you have comments, suggestions or additional features that would help us improve D3M? Can you think of any additional features that would take D3M to the next level?
The ability to view icons in a rack view and having them automatically snap into place would be ideal, as most of our systems sit within a rack. Also the ability to have multiple revisions saved within one project, allowing for you to track all customer revisions for troubleshooting, changes or miscommunications in the future.
**Note: Rack view is currently being built within D3M, with the ability to snap icons into place and is scheduled to be released in the New Year.
If you were to review D3M what score would you give it out of 10?
7.5
Would you recommend D3M to a friend in the industry?
Yes.
Please finish this sentence in 25 words or less… “D3M has been beneficial to Icom America because…”
...it allows everyone to be on the same page of what a systems infrastructure design is going to look like.
Want to see how other companies use D3M within their day-to-day activities? Check out other user interviews!
