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Special Report Geoengineering at Bentley by Susan Smith
The Bentley International User Conference held in Atlantic City this past week (May 20-23) did hold some interest for GIS users and those users of transportation, utility or other solutions who must integrate with GIS software in some way. First of all, let it be said that the potential of MicroStation V8 will more than likely have a profound effect on GIS. Although Bentley has never purported to have a GIS, they do have MicroStation Geographics, a mapping product that works with MicroStation. The latest release of Geographics was touted at the BIUC - the first release completely integrated with V8 will debut in the fall. What this means is that it works so seamlessly within V8 that you don''t see it - it is not even noted on the toolbar. For those users who need to use CAD files with maps and other geographic data that is derived from numerous sources, the complete integration with V8 could prove to be very useful. MicroStation V8 enables users to read DWG files natively, which makes it of great interest to AutoCAD users as well as MicroStation users. Secondly, Bentley released the latest MicroStation Descartes V8, with full 24-bit image editing. With the high powered raster functionality added to the product, users can edit and manipulate a wide range of black and white and color imagery for many mapping, visualization and presentation tasks, as well as engineering and document conversion. It allows viewing and editing of Mr. SID and ECM files. It offers native support on a large range of industry-standard raster file formats and compression methods. Also, it offers visualization with image draping using 3D terrain models, and of course, much more.
Thirdly, Bentley will soon announce a relationship with ESRI to work on interoperability between the ESRI suite of products and MicroStation V8. Most probably, this will mean that Bentley will work out how to read ArcView and ArcInfo files natively in V8, as it has done with AutoCAD files. The details of this relationship will be announced at the CADD/GIS Symposium in San Antonio in August. What Bentley hopes to achieve with the relationship with ESRI: Geoengineering at Bentley Continued… The key industry segments they are targeting:
Fourthly, Bentley announced plans to distribute Cyra Technologies'' CloudWorx 3D cloud point data application software for MicroStation. Point clouds created by Cyrax 3D Laser Scanning technology show tremendous potential to industries such as plant manufacturing, transportation and building - for asset management, construction planning and quality control. During a demo during a keynote, Keith Bentley demonstrated that while he was talking a small green laser light was moving around the auditorium gathering data. While he was talking, the screen behind him traced out the form of the auditorium, the columns, stage and its inhabitants in cloud points which were dropped into MicroStation V8 to form a 3D model. It was an impressive demonstration and filled people''s minds with possibilities for the future. Although there are other laser scanning products on the market, this demo was a clear visual of this type of technology and its capabilities. Other relationships of note: Bentley has recently signed a letter of intent to "complete a software development and licensing agreement" with ArcSecond. This will allow Bentley to leverage ArcSecond''s mobile engineering technology based on the Microsoft CE platform. The plan is to bring wireless mobile communications to AEC professionals, so they can manage and publish design and engineering materials in the field, on construction sites.
Bentley also announced the availability of Bentley View (new release announced) and Bentley Redline, which are integrated components of the V8 generation of products. Bentley View enables the viewing natively of both DGN and DWG drawings and models. Bentley Redline is useful to those participants of a project team who need to view DGN and DWG files and contribute comments to the process. Info Tech, a Bentley integrator, is deploying Interplot Servers which is a big step toward e-commerce. Geoengineering figured quite heavily in a keynote on "Government, Telco and Utility," presented by Carey Mann, vice president of Industry and Product Marketing, and Styli Camanteros, vice president of Product Management, Content Management and Publishing, and Jackie Sandgaard, director Industry Marketing International, Government, Telco and Utilities. What customers want is a platform to design, engineer, operate, maintain government, telco and utility assets. Through geoengineering, planning and engineering construction, this is possible. The New York Transit System was built in 1903 and at that time had 22 miles of track. Today, says Mann, there are countless miles of track and 500,000 drawings - that''s a lot of spatial assets. Shared planning among planning and engineering and constuction ideally creates a triangle of information created between planners, engineers/constructors. For more extensive coverage on BIUC, visit AECVision at http://www.aecvision.mag |
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Keith Bentley, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Bentley Systems, Inc.
Walker Lee Evey, Program Manager for the Pentagon Renovation Office
