AECCafe Today Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ CategoryData at the heart of CrossrailMonday, October 25th, 2010
Crossrail was also the winner of the Be Inspired Award in the category “Connecting Project Teams,” winning over two other Crossrail fnalists.
Bentley press conference, Wednesday, October 20Monday, October 25th, 2010CEO Greg Bentley held a press briefing on October 20 at the Be Inspired event in Amsterdam, where he made several announcements: one being the launch of the Bentley Infrastructure 500 – modeled after Fortune 500 – which would identify Bentley customers who are especially successful. Bentley said their business represents $13 trillion in revenue.
This determination is made based on reported net tangible fixed assets – the balance sheet view of the infrastructure. “
These are some of the facts about the companies:
– 92 of top 100 are Bentley Subscribers – 61 of the top 100 have adopted ProjectWise – 40 of the top 100 have adopted Navigator
Most top candidates are private companies, coming from geographically diverse locations – all over the world.
The economy is a player in this situation – during a year like this one, the exchange rate is volatile. Many public entities are valued based on cost and others may be valued for what they could sell for. Because of the economy, many infrastructure companies have been working off backlog and have been resourceful in this way. Bentley said this may coincide with employment statistics.
He went on to say that “flat” pretty much describes Bentley’s financial growth right now.
Revenues went down almost 10% in 2009. In 2010 to date, revenues have been reported to be “within sight of 2008 revenues. By the end of the year Bentley predicts their run rate will be back to what it was before 2009. “Maybe our organic growth is the new growth,” he said.
New Bentley products coming up:
– The V8i portfolio extends through various disciplines and operations.
– OpenPlant Modeler extends breadth of applications offerings.
– Navigator v8i addresses information modeling in construction – constructors want to resolve conflicts with “dynamic collaboration”. New functionality in upcoming release will deliver bidirectional schedule synchronization with Microsoft Project or Primavera and introduces new markup templates.
– Interest in 3D cities requires the ability to relate information together in a BIM model.
– Civil Engineer for Geotechnical Analysis passport subscription – geotechnical professionals will get to pick from a variety of modules from a dashboard – cantilever wall, spread footing, slope stability, etc.
– ProjectWise v8i SelectSeries 3 introduces a Navigator web part to view i-models in a browser or SharePoint 2010 web parts.
– ProjectWise Dynamic Plot v8i SelectSeries 2 enables dynamic plots to be published from PDFs as well as from DGNS and DWGs.
-ConstructSIM will be integrated with ProjectWise Navigator in the next release.
– Bentley Substation v8i is a standalone application with deeper integration with ProjectWise to increase enterprise support for i-models. It also includes embedded point cloud capability. – – Bentley Pipe Renewal Planner Include extended team members in your AEC projectTuesday, October 19th, 2010Warning: Undefined array key 3 in /www/www10/htdocs/blogs/wp-content/plugins/embedded-video-with-link/embedded-video.php on line 176 Warning: Undefined array key 3 in /www/www10/htdocs/blogs/wp-content/plugins/embedded-video-with-link/embedded-video.php on line 218 As projects are becoming more complex with more global distribution, customers are asking for a data management system that provides AEC project teams with an accurate view of their project wherever they are, with access to information across the project lifecycle. They want a collaboration solution that will focus on the project, not the data, that will also offer viral team communication to include social networking and ad hoc collaboration.
According to Rick Rundell, senior director AEC Strategic Technology, Autodesk’s BIM 360 is the answer to those customer requirements. As part of the entire AEC collaboration data solution, BIM 360 joins Vault and Buzzsaw. Autodesk Vault is
at the heart of BIM 360. Utilizing Autodesk Cloud, Autodesk BIM 360 delivers collaboration and data management across the project, across AEC teams and across the enterprise. It can be used with people outside your firewall as well as those within it.
By delivering the right information to the right people at the right time, AEC teams can formulate better decisions and minimize mistakes and rework. The opportunity to engage stakeholders in the design process by providing more accurate information and analysis is a win-win and can only result in better outcomes throughout the project lifecycle.
The ability to facilitate early multi-discipline collaboration in design and construction planning — via multi-discipline model aggregation, model exchange, clash detection and analysis – gives AEC teams a better understanding of the project before breaking ground for construction.
Autodesk BIM 360 offers a single reference point for all team members involved in the project lifecycle – from concept to design through to construction, operations
and maintenance. Be Inspired Tuesday morningTuesday, October 19th, 2010This morning in Amsterdam, the weather alternated between sun, clouds and rain. At the Hotel Okura, COO Malcom Walter welcomed attendees to Bentley’s Be Inspired Conference, an event that recognizes outstanding infrastructure projects around the world. Attendees came from all over the world to see presentations by competition finalists.
Walter showed a video of the first miner in the Chilean mine disaster as he was brought to the surface to emphasize the human side to infrastructure.
The Netherlands is known for its infrastructure – the very existence of the country has depended on windmills and dykes that keep land and sea separate. Walter said that without infrastructure to pump water and keep it in bay, everything would be under water.
This year there will be video recordings of the finalists’ presentations available on the Bentley website.
CEO Greg Bentley talked about resilience and helping the world be more resilient. “We define infrastructure as the way we improve our planet,” he said.
He showed some slides that highlighted the use of Bentley products through out the recession. Bentley pointed out that after the recession hit, there have been more people in front of MicroStation, and although that might be good in some ways, it also means that people are working more hours now.
Other facts: 1)New countries are now reporting usage that weren’t before this year.
2) Bentley has seen growth in Europe’s MicroStation utilization hours.
3) Asia has never had a recession.
4) Infrastructure and plant have had a hard time sustaining growth, geospatial and civil has had some growth.
5) Bentley has achieved some growth in 2010.
6) Projectwise passport adoption has grown greatly in 2010 and is used by the majority of top Design 100 firms.
7) Bentley is ranked #2 in the geospatial market according to Daratech.
8) Bentley is ranked #1 in plant & process market according to Daratech.
Tug of War for CADWorx customersWednesday, October 13th, 2010Concurrently with the CADWorx University User Conference sponsored by Intergraph, Autodesk announced the Autodesk Plant Conversion Program for CADWorx customers. The program “is designed to help users of Intergraph CADWorx software transition to the benefits of the Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2011, a new software suite for plant designers that offers plant design and whole-project review capabilities in a single integrated package,” according to the press release.
CADWorx is built on AutoCAD. CADWorx users who want to transition to the Autodesk Plant Design Suite will get a 6-step project start-up tool kit when they purchase a license to the Suite. The kit provides new project templates, migration tools, and reference materials to help simplify the conversion of legacy CADWorx specs and catalogs.
Autodesk’s Robert Shear, director of plant industry marketing, Autodesk AEC Solutions, said that the purpose of the conversion program is twofold – 1) if you want to convert to a new product you want to evaluate the capabilities, usability and productivity of a new product ahead of time, and you can download the Autodesk Plant Design Suite for free and try it out, and 2) users have invested in creating specifications for certain types of projects with specific content such as pipes, valves, etc. and that CADWorx users think that Autodesk has a “long term” roadmap.
The conversion promises to be usable for converters – quickly, which is not something one generally associates with 3D plant offerings. Plant design projects generally encompass a large number of AutoCAD users, who can transition from AutoCAD to other AutoCAD-based products without much of a learning curve.
Shear said (after attending CADWorx University) there is “long time loyalty among CADWorx customers” and believes CADWorx users are “looking for an alternative.” He suggests that these customers are concerned about the future of the resellers they deal with and about the frequency of updates and product support.
Executive vice president, Business Development, Intergraph Process Power & Marine, Patrick Holcomb, echoed this concern in saying that some users had feared that Intergraph might shut down CADWorx and maybe force upgrade to SmartPlant 3D or something else. “It was shocking – whether we liked it or not, we had a question mark in the audience starting the event; by the end of it, that was no longer an issue,” said Holcomb. Customers wanted to know how Intergraph would make CADWorx successful. Already, CADWorx is successful, the company reports, with September being the biggest month they have had. In addition, at the conference they unveiled publicly CADWorx 2011 beta, which will be probably ready to release sometime in the next month.
Intergraph is clearly excited about the product line (see Getting Smart About 3D Plant Design with 3D CADWorx, GISWeekly, October 11, 2010) and have no plans of subsuming it or letting it go. Intergraph’s SmartPlant 3D is a behemoth plant design system that serves its purpose for large projects, whereas CADWorx and the other COADE acquisitions serve an entry level plant design market, addressing smaller projects, of which there are many.
Autodesk likens this scenario to Bentley’s acquisition of Rebis some years ago and their subsequent entry-level product, AutoPlant. This is another customer base that Autodesk offers a conversion plan to. When Bentley acquired Rebis, Autodesk did not at the time have a competing plant design software offering.
It is true that Intergraph has served larger projects very well, and has not focused on solutions for smaller projects. This is a new customer base for them. But my guess is that may be changing and broadening with the acquisition of Intergraph by Hexagon AB as well as customer requirements, which reflect the need for applications for projects such as brownfield projects.
In a recent interview with CEO Hexagon (soon to be owner of Intergraph), Ole Rollén, he suggested that CAD systems may be in their future again, “What we need to do is to deliver good application software and good solutions to the professionals….we have certain markets where I can see the need for CAD systems, going forward, but that’s more construction-related. You should be able to download a 3D model of a building, for example, and download that into your measurement device that will guide you where to put the air conditioning, spotlights, cabling in walls, etc. and these are technologies we are developing.”
Rollén also said: “Plant is probably our single largest application within the Hexagon group.” It stands to reason that the company would want to invest in as many aspects of plant design as it can to serve an existing and possibly growing customer base. Shear said the cost of a license of the Autodesk Plant Design Suite is “roughly the same” as that of a license of CADWorx. But what Autodesk has going for it, in addition to offering 3D plant design, P&ID and basic AutoCAD in the Autodesk Plant Design Suite, is Navisworks, which unlocks legacy 3D data. So there you have it. Will CADWorx users want to make the switch from a product they have been happy with up until now…is this an offer they can’t refuse? |
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“Data is the blood that runs through cross rail veins,” said Be Inspired Conference guest keynote speaker, Malcom Taylor, P.E., and head of technical support services, Crossrail. “It is at the heart of what we’re doing in crossrail.”
