CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 November 2008
Product News
Bentley Announces V8i Software Portfolio for Infrastructure Professionals
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced V8i, the most comprehensive software portfolio for infrastructure ever assembled in a single release. Encompassing products for all of the solution communities served by Bentley, the V8i portfolio leverages and extends core capabilities of its new interoperability platform to provide the breadth and depth of technology needed for fully integrated project delivery. V8i’s interoperability platform enables Bentley applications to persist, share, and visualize infrastructure asset data in a common way, promoting collaborative workflows. The result is a project environment that combines flexibility, and scalability and a portfolio that offers engineers, architects, GIS professionals, constructors, and owner-operators choices across discipline-specific integrated software and services incorporated in Bentley solutions. Developed as a collective whole, the V8i software portfolio facilitates streamlined workflows among multiple disciplines and across project teams throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.
The benefits of V8i include increased information quality, enhanced infrastructure asset quality, improved operational safety, reduced project costs, and shortened delivery times. Among the many innovative core capabilities of V8i are intuitive design modeling, interactive dynamic views, intrinsic geo-coordination, and incredible project performance.
“We are confident that the release of V8i, which began today and will be completed over the next 60 days, will introduce significant innovation and workflow improvements that set new benchmarks for infrastructure professions in virtually every discipline,” said CTO Keith Bentley.
Said CEO Greg Bentley, “Our virtually concurrent release of this comprehensive portfolio of products is, by any measure in the software industry, an ambitious undertaking. Its timeliness is underscored by the importance of the challenges met by our users as they strive to sustain the world’s infrastructure and address such critical issues as aging bridges, water system losses, energy and commodity supply, building efficiency, and environmental resilience.”
He continued, “We have developed V8i with these pivotal needs in mind, including the most critical challenge – the global shortfall in engineering resources in relation to infrastructure requirements. Moving emphatically beyond merely computer-aiding the production of traditional ‘deliverables,’ including design, drawings, and models, our mandate for the V8i portfolio has been to provide our users with the capabilities they need to increase their cost-efficiencies and maximize the return on their investments in innovation, empowering them to design, build, and operate better-performing infrastructure projects and assets.”
Two critical advantages of the V8i portfolio are intraoperability and interoperability. Together, they enable broader reuse of project and asset information generated during the design, construction, and operation of infrastructure, and enhance the ability of project teams to choose among multiple software offerings. The intraoperability occurs across and between tightly coupled V8i products without loss of information. The interoperability occurs across necessarily distributed projects where participants can now increase their choice of software offerings from Bentley, loosely but usefully coupled with the work of other practitioners using software based on DGN, PDF, DWG, ISO 15926, IFC, and other industry standards and related APIs.
Some of the key business benefits of V8i to user organizations include:
-- Infrastructure project improvements leading to lower total installed cost coupled with lower operating expenses,
-- More efficient retrofits and modifications throughout an asset's lifecycle,
-- A competitive edge in the face of increased global competition,
-- Increased efficiency, safety, and reliability of infrastructure and the services it provides.
Core V8i Capabilities
V8i’s interoperability platform provides improved integration among Bentley products. This allows infrastructure professionals to take advantage of the following core V8i capabilities that are leveraged within the entire portfolio:
-- Intuitive design modeling lets users transition from conceptual modeling and visualization to fully complete architectural and engineering models in a single environment. For example, the new GenerativeComponents, surface, and push-pull modeling tools enable teams to capture innovative thinking and transition rapidly from concept to completion. In addition, the parametric and associative modeling tools allow users to iterate more easily on design alternatives and answer more questions earlier in the process. Through the flexibility of this powerful toolset, infrastructure professionals can timely explore and embrace innovations to improve the performance of the projects and assets their teams deliver.
Additionally, the new Luxology rendering engine incorporated in the MicroStation product and all MicroStation-based applications provides near-real-time rendering in the design application. This saves time and improves the quality of rendered images for stakeholder review and buy-in.
-- Interactive dynamic views make working in 3D much more interactive and more informative. V8i builds on and extends existing approaches to solving the problem of drawing coordination for complex models by actively supporting the workflows of distributed multidisciplinary teams all working on the same project. V8i goes one step further by helping users simplify the 3D model creation process. Employing something called "display sets," V8i users can easily change the way different parts of a 3D model are displayed in the same working view to interactively visualize and resymbolize 2D and 3D designs in real time.
-- Intrinsic geo-coordination assures that all V8i projects include the real-world location of the infrastructure site, and inherit the useful reference data already diversely available. This capability lets infrastructure professionals synchronize and coordinate true and projected coordinate systems, use a single interpretation system for universal and industry-standard reference sources, and reduce the risks of errors on site.
-- Incredible project performance lets users work faster and collaborate more effectively to make the process of work sharing across multiple, distributed offices easy and efficient, even for the world's largest infrastructure projects. V8i delivers a series of productivity and accessibility gains through accelerated file transfer between locations - with 10x performance gains being the norm for average files sizes - and full read/write integration with Microsoft SharePoint provided for improved overall usability.
What Users Are Saying About V8i
“Saving time and working faster are really what it’s all about. V8i makes it easy to move around projects and find precisely what we need. We can find the right design or sheet and get working fast with Project Explorer, and interact with models within drawing sheets with reference activation. There are so many ways to find design information, including dynamic views and saved views. In addition, V8i allows us to work seamlessly with DGN or DWG file formats.” – Stuart Willows, Wm Saunders Partnership LLP, a U.K. multidisciplinary practice of architects, interior designers, project managers, structural and civil engineers, quantity surveyors, building surveyors, and CDM coordinators
“We’re eagerly awaiting ProjectWise V8i’s release to take advantage of the new Delta File Transfer technology. Preliminary testing has shown file transfer times can be accelerated by as much as 54x for large files and 3x for small files. These dramatic improvements will allow us to make more efficient use of the network among our 60+ offices, and provide significantly faster access for our external clients and sub-consultants.” – Mo Harmon, vice president, HNTB, a multidisciplinary infrastructure firm that provides planning, design, program management and construction management services for highway, toll road, bridge, airport, rail and water projects
“MicroStation V8i is a landmark release. Among its many enhancements and improvements, one of the most beneficial from a production standpoint is reference activation. It saves me loads of time and helps me create more accurate drawings by allowing me to easily and instantly fix any errors on referenced models.” – Matthew VanSweden, Integrated Architecture, a full-service practice offering expertise in all aspects of architecture, engineering, planning, and interior design
“While MicroStation V8i promises many great new features, we are most excited about dynamic views. In addition to producing 2D documents that are live representations of our 3D building information models, the ability to interactively define sections through our BIM models while symbolizing the information uniquely in different areas with display styles will enable us to visualize our designs in ways that we hadn’t been able to conceptualize before. Kudos to Bentley for making 3D design more interactive and more informative.” – Tim Grimm, design technology manager, LMN Architects, a full-service firm focusing on convention, office, mixed-use/retail, cultural, sports, urban and interior architecture
To find out what other users are saying about V8i, visit http://www.bentley.com/v8iusers.
V8i “Introductory Financing” Program
In recognition of sudden global credit constraints, and to facilitate incorporating the best information modeling technologies into critical infrastructure initiatives – improving the economic performance of the projects and resulting assets – Bentley also announced a new financing program to accelerate adoption and return on investment in V8i. For new licenses purchased during the balance of 2008 (at Bentley’s standard competitive pricing), fees may be paid in three annual installments. Also, to expedite realization of V8i’s benefits for infrastructure, during the balance of 2008, users of Bentley software who are not presently subscribers to the Bentley SELECT subscription program may join SELECT without needing to pay the back fees that would normally pertain for periods of non-coverage.
Said Malcolm Walter, Bentley’s chief operating officer, “I am proud that Bentley is extending its tradition of leading the software industry in commercial innovation, at this time when the economic benefit of IT’s technical innovations are most needed, but the sudden dire financing environment would otherwise serve to thwart the capital outlays for the procurement even of productivity-enhancing software. As a privately held company without a debt burden, we’re able to offer the ‘Introductory Financing’ program for V8i as our contribution to ‘economic stimulus’ for our users and prospects. This initiative towards ‘software as a service,’ in economic terms, will enable infrastructure practitioners to adopt the best technology within operating budgets, for immediate return on investment – while sustaining infrastructure benefits for all!”
Bentley unveiled the V8i software portfolio for sustaining infrastructure today during an event at The Ritz-Carlton, Philadelphia. The event was broadcast live around the globe and included demonstrations and presentations on the key advantages of V8i.
For more information about V8i, visit http://www.bentley.com/v8i. Current subscribers of Bentley SELECT may download V8i products as they are released at http://selectservices.bentley.com Others may contact a Bentley representative at www.bentley.com or call 1-800-BENTLEY.
Bentley Also Launches BE Communities
In other news, Bentley today announced the official launch of BE Communities, a social networking site for professionals in the architecture, engineering, construction, operations, and GIS communities. BE Communities includes tools such as forums, blogs, resource galleries, and a wiki that allow members of the infrastructure community to connect, communicate, and learn from each other. Originally launched in beta during the BE Conference in May of this year, the BE Communities site has since been enhanced and updated. To access BE Communities, visit http://communities.bentley.com.
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