The number of large scale construction projects that are implementing building information modeling for collaboration, integrated project delivery and lifecycle management is growing all the time.
AECCafe Voice
Posts Tagged ‘Bentley Systems’
BIM delivers tangible benefits for construction
Thursday, February 6th, 2014
Top AEC Predictions for 2014 – AECCafe Voice
Tuesday, January 7th, 2014Last year’s predictions for the year, Top AEC Predictions for 2013 – AECCafe Voice, were somewhat different from this year’s. Although those predictions are still useful to note this year, I am focusing on some product directions and initiatives since there is a continuing, pressing need to address critical infrastructure, fueled largely by climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, and failing infrastructure and economy. Products developed and industries becoming more collaborative all shape the predictions of the year 2014.
Perot Museum of Nature and Science design mirrors Texas’ natural environment
Tuesday, November 26th, 2013The Perot Museum of Nature and Science located in Dallas, Texas, won a Be Inspired “Special Recognition Award” in the category “Innovations in Comprehensive BIM” at the Year In Infrastructure 2013 (YII2013) event held in London in October. The building, designed by Morphosis Architects, is very striking in that it is embues the visitor with the feeling of the natural environment of Texas, with its earthy use of rocks, stone, concrete and sedimentation of the earth layering.
Cancer Treatment Centre in the UK offers “Care Villages” for healing
Friday, November 15th, 2013The winner of the “Innovation in Building” Category in the Bentley Be Inspired Awards held in London during the “Year in Infrastructure 2013” event this month was the Cancer Treatment Centre for Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospitals, London.
Recap of Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2013 Conference
Thursday, November 7th, 2013Bentley’s annual Year in Infrastructure event is a showcase for the company’s Be Inspired award winners in various industry categories, as well as an opportunity for the company to demonstrate some of its new directions and product releases. Some of the big topics this year were the introduction of Bentley’s Cloud Services added to the platform, the SaaS Project Sharing Services, the potential of a health information model, the new Innovation page where users can view and comment on new research and development.
One BlackFriars Road, London, Ian Simpson Architects
Bringing Buildings and Infrastructure Together
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013
Bentley Year in Infrastructure Kicks Off in London
Tuesday, October 29th, 2013
Bentley’s Field Supervisor app for the iPad announced
Thursday, August 8th, 2013In July, Bentley Systems announced their Field Supervisor, an app for the iPad that allows users to connect to multiple data sources. It extends the reach of information that is managed securely in ProjectWise and eB, and in other user repositories to field workers with online and offline access. Now construction professionals and field workers can make on-site decisions more easily with current project information.
“We’ve been doing a lot around information mobility, and how can we help infrastructure teams share and collaborate and interact with information across the phases of a project, between systems and people,” Huw Roberts, vice president, Core Marketing at Bentley said. “Fundamentally we want people to be able to interact with project information on a mobile and have that be part of their workflow, rather than a separate app or technology. Our app strategy is built around extending and building upon those secure project environments.”
Bentley Map Mobile debuts for infrastructure professionals
Thursday, July 25th, 2013The first version of Bentley Map Mobile, a Bentley app that empowers infrastructure professionals to share Bentley Map geospatial information with field technicians via Android-based mobile devices, was released recently.
In a conversation with Richard Zambuni, global marketing director, geospatial and utilities at Bentley Systems, he said that the Bentley Map Mobile project was initiated through an engagement with a telecommunications company who requested they start development work on it. “Although it works with any class of infrastructure that is managed geospatially it was an engagement with telecommunications firm that initiated the project,” said Zambuni. It is “very much a first release, and it will be available in the future on other operating systems. For upcoming releases, we are looking at including redlining, inserting special objects, editing object attributes, to support different workflows. Bentley is working on closed loop workflows in the cloud for bringing in data. Users can publish spatial data as an i-model and it can be consumed on the Android device. They can use very large datasets and the performance is excellent.”
“A lot of our users will want to support specific workflows with this technology on mobile devices, so we have an SDK to help them develop what they need,” said Zambuni. “This will be able to be tailored to individual organizations. We will provide redlining, and object editing out of the box in future releases, but the more specific forms-based interaction with the data will probably have to be created by the users themselves using consultants. Some will have programming resources in house.”
Spatial information on smart devices is something Bentley has been moving toward for some time as the consumerization of physical formats has coincided with the ability to view and interact with very large datasets. Plans for further releases on different operating systems are in the works; next on the list is the iOS platform.
Bentley Mobile Map is available publicly but users can only publish to Bentley Map Mobile from Bentley software. There is a free publishing utility to create i-models which works with Bentley Map Enterprise, Bentley Utilities Designer, and Bentley’s communications products, including Bentley Coax, Bentley Copper, Bentley Fiber, and Bentley Inside Plant. These are Bentley’s geospatial products that are application-specific.
“Although you can’t publish from Esri products such as ArcGIS or ArcMap directly,” explains Zambuni. “You can bring in shapefiles to Bentley Map and publish out through Bentley Map to Bentley Map Mobile, but you have to bring the data into a DGN environment to publish out.”
When this technology is deployed , it will mostly be at a departmental level to support departmental workflows, which may require that users develop their own “flavor” of the app on top of the SDK. The SDK enables organizations to make the app as light and simple to use as possible – to be used in the field by many people inside and outside of the organization who are not GIS professionals, such as construction and engineering teams, installation and maintenance teams, and inspectors.
From the press release:
Bentley Map Mobile provides the following functionality:
- fast access to large geospatial data sets;
- easy-to-use, standard tablet-based gestures such as pinch to zoom, swipe to drag, point to select features, etc.;
- simple query mechanism to look up features quickly;
- GPS integration for fast location in the field;
- Google Maps integration for directions to located features (with network connection);
- disconnected, view-only operation for access anywhere, without a network connection;
- raster and vector display.
The advantages of Bentley Map Mobile include:
- improving the quality of decisions made by field personnel by providing quick access to accurate, up-to-date asset information;
- increasing worker safety by having access to current information as well as information on adjacent utilities that might have an impact on the work they are completing;
- increasing the return on investment in geospatial data by making this valuable data available to an entirely new group of users.
Bentley Map Mobile is available to all Bentley Passport holders at no additional charge and can be accessed at www.bentley.com/BentleyMapMobile.
Building mis-information has profound impact on AEC industry
Monday, June 3rd, 2013Michelle Addington, Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design at Yale University, is educated as both an architect and engineer whose teaching and research explore energy systems, advanced materials and new technologies, spoke at sg 2013 in April 2013 at the University of London on the topic, “Data and its dis-contents”.
