CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 January 2005
Company News
Bentley Provides MicroStation PowerDraft at No Cost to Schools and Students
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that as an extension of its recently launched "You Deserve Better" upgrade program, aimed at helping AutoCAD users facing Autodesk's forced retirement, students and educators can now download MicroStation PowerDraft 2D/3D CAD software at no cost. This offering, which reaffirms Bentley's unique commitment to users, will help community colleges, middle and high schools, and vocational schools overcome the problem of keeping technical curriculums current, even when budgets are tight.
"The MicroStation PowerDraft academic offer is a bold step forward to help prepare future engineers in computer-aided design," said Jay Sunyogh, professor and chairman of architecture and computer-aided design at Rio Hondo Community College in California. "We use many of the Bentley products in our CAD program, and expect that the new MicroStation PowerDraft offer will make incoming high school students better prepared."
MicroStation PowerDraft, which has a list price of US$1,295, is a professional-level application used for production 2D/3D drafting and detailing. It features an easy-to-use graphical user interface, intuitive viewing techniques, and an innovative set of industry-recognized tools for production work.
MicroStation PowerDraft can also serve as an ideal training vehicle for MicroStation, a comprehensive platform for 3D modeling, data versatility, workgroup productivity, and application development. MicroStation is Bentley's flagship product underlying the design, construction, and operation of the world's infrastructure, and has become a standard for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) projects worldwide:
• Most of Engineering News-Record's Top 150 Global Design Firms rely primarily on Bentley software for their AEC projects
• Forty-eight of the 50 state departments of transportation in the United States have standardized on MicroStation for engineering
• More than 2,000 secondary schools, colleges, and universities, including Cal Poly Pomona, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, SUNY Buffalo, Auburn University, Purdue University, the University of Michigan, and Stanford University, have subscribed to MicroStation-based software as members of the Bentley Education Network
Included with the free software is a comprehensive training guide that provides step-by-step exercises to familiarize students with MicroStation PowerDraft and general CAD concepts. In addition, there is an instructor guide with lesson plans for introductory CAD, basic drafting, and comparative CAD.
To download your free copy of MicroStation PowerDraft or for more details, go to http://www.bentley.com/academic .
Bentley's "You Deserve Better" upgrade program was initiated to help AutoCAD users facing forced retirement of their software by Autodesk. Developed in response to Bentley's survey of more than 2,500 AutoCAD users, the program gives these users what they requested, plus a great deal more. It provides an open, universal solution compared to the AutoCAD offerings, including native support of DWG and DGN in all products, read and write support of DWG back to R11, and support of Adobe PDF. In addition, it offers users a far better set of products and services, as well as better, user-oriented policies that make user organizations more competitive and put them in control of their software costs.
"You Deserve Better" is being extended to new users through this academic offering. To get more details on Bentley's "You Deserve Better" upgrade program, talk to an expert, review the survey results, and/or download Bentley's free DGN/DWG viewer, go to http://www.bentley.com/YouDeserveBetter .
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