An interesting 3rd tool is "AXSYS.Process" now owned by Bentley (Note AspenTech had to divest itself of AXSYS as part of FTC settlement over acquisition of "Hyprotech" products - see pg 36 of their 2005 Annual report, including non-compete with Honeywell's operator-training simulators).

Bob has evaluated third-party tools such as AutoVue, BlueBeam which do red-lining and checking of CAD "2-D" systems used by EPC firms, e.g. AutoDesk, Bentley, & Intergraph Smart Plant P&ID.

BACKGROUND
Bob Andrew is an early pioneer in the application of computing tools in doing process/HSE design, starting with his Ph.D. work on "Expert Systems in Steelmaking" which used timeshare access to mainframes in the U.S. from New Zealand in the early 1970's. After that at Petromas Engineering he was in charge of all computer applications, initially on service bureaux time-share, but then on the first IBM 5100 sold in the southern US. This 64kB memory "luggable" used 3M tape drives, 5" screen, and BASIC language, on which Bob developed programs to conduct dispersion modeling and emissions inventory management. He was active in Houston with the first release of the IGES specification in the late 1970's.

While at the University of Auckland teaching "Process Analysis, Synthesis and Design" 1983-1985 he built out a six-workstation "design studio" with computational tools for process design.  At N.Z. Synthetic Fuels in mid-80's his role included the first dual-screen Intergraph workstation in N.Z. At NZ SynFuel he used the original ASPEN code in FORTRAN to de-bottleneck methanol reforming and synthesis, and ACSL code for dynamic simulation of steam, feed and fuel system upsets and the needed adjustments to control tuning.

At Mobil R&D Corp in early 1990's he used SimSci's PRO/II as well as supervising the development of custom process advisories: expert diagnostic systems sitting on top of refinery DCS and LIMS data systems through "PI" interface for data extraction

In returning to Process Design in the mid 2000's he has used PRO/II and HYSYS for a variety of process and HSE analyses, as well as using and developing Excel-based tools for detail design.