Bentley wants his dgn to be more popular

Last year we signed the Pact for Gender Equality in Colombia, an agreement that symbolizes the co-responsibility of around XNUMX organizations with the implementation of actions that contribute to reducing inequalities. I was talking than he thought he could perceive of Bentley with his I-model criteria. This year, smoking is clearer, and boy is it, after seeing the results of the integration of recent acquisitions such as eB, Exor And greater exploitation of the xml potential.

For many years the dgn has been a very proprietary and exclusive Bentley format, although the V7 with the OpenDGN alliance could be released to the other applications, version 8 has still been an exclusive feature of large companies that have high strategic alliances. level, as is the case with AutoDesk, Oracle and ESRI. although so far only to read or import it but not to edit it. Small businesses and opensource initiatives have stayed on the sidelines, and the xml features embedded in the xfm have so far been a Bentley issue.

But as seen in the trend of the last year, Bentley no longer wants to continue having an exclusive format and does not want to give up all that it cost him to get to have the V8, which after more than 10 years seems to have been conceived at once. When you see the conceptual model of the I-model, it is clear that Bentley wants to transcend the interoperability that technologies now allow, without losing what they have always boasted: precision (Accurate), but not only want to be seen by engineers , if its format has basic useful information for other users (self-aware). Strong challenge if he manages to mount the big ones on the boat and open doors to the little ones who for days have been resentful of the apparent double talk of opendgn.

The Basic Smoke: Bentley wants your pdf

It is the preliminary conclusion that I can understand. He wants to popularize a format like Acrobat pdf, like AutoDesk dxf, like png, like txt !!!. But the Cranberry Is not to make a new version of dgn but to make many programs read dgn what can be useful.

Geofumadas: Do you plan to generate a new version of dgn with the I-model or in the 64-bit era?

Bentley: Definitely not, the dgn V8 is a wonderful one. 

(Be Inspired 2010, ProjectWise round table)

For this reason, Bentley is looking for the I-model part of the dgn to have popularized use characteristics. Now a dgn can be viewed and made basic routines of zoom, pam, select, rotate, markup and data review. This from thin clients:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Web navigator
• Microsoft Sharepoint
• Windows Explorer (Windows 7)

Of course, it is understood that CAD / GIS / CAM programs and spatial databases will see not the dgn, but the xml geometry and attributes in the form they are accustomed to seeing it.

The average smoke, Bentley goes through the fifth dimension

This is not a new topic, for a long time there has been an attempt to integrate Automated Control (SCADA) to spatial data. To do this, all Bentley programs will have the ability to generate I-models, which will include this level of integration to time flows, productivity and life cycle.

Bentley is also launching its ProjectWise Navigator. So far it is free for users of active licenses through SELECT, I think it will remain free or will have a symbolic value so that non-Bentley users can see the power behind the I-model. Navigator is the successor to the primitive Bentley View and later mutated into the Bentley Redline, but now with capabilities far beyond view, annotate and print:

• It can read dgn, dwg, dxf formats; and I assume you can do more. At this level the PW Navigator stays at a basic level (3D) of what it was doing although you can also see tabular data associated with the objects and perhaps basic rendering.
• Where the potential is in the two other levels, because if the dgn has been generated with I-model composer, it will be possible to see characteristics of specific disciplines at a transactional level (4D), being able to interact with the observations and storing data within a Controlled process during execution or operation (5D).

Astral smoke: Bentley wants to go to the fifth dimension.

• If it is a common dgn, only the basic properties of the elements such as color, thickness, level, priority, padding, coordinates, etc. will be seen. What a dwg, dxf and geopdf will look like. With this we understand options to be able to see, render, turn off / on layers, zoom in, rotate, print, etc.
• But if it was treated by Revit or Staad, you can see characteristics of that discipline. As well as if it was treated with Inroads, Bentley Map, Architecture, etc. with the aim that multidisciplinary processes can be carried out on the same dgn.
• 
• With this Bentley is integrating a fourth dimension, as the characteristics of redline, approve, revise, digitally sign and store transactional history with multiple disciplines adds the fourth dimension called Time.
• But Bentley is not stopping here and is adding a fifth dimension, which can be likened to what is economic value, productivity or life cycle within a dashboard. An object can have three dimensions and in time mutate (grow) or conserve natural age, but the fact of being productive (multiplying), being part of a flow or conserving a history of economic value is what is being considered fifth dimension. In a basic sense, integrate operation and maintenance through intelligent infrastructures.
• 
• A basic example of this is the budget of a project, dynamically integrated with the calculation of quantities from the digital model. And then the control of the execution, acquisition of materials, management of advance estimates and subsequent control of operations. Type what you do NeoDATa But with integration to the objects (not basic 2D calculations).
• For this, Bentley introduces Aset Wise, which joins the two multidisciplinary products that we had been getting to know so far (Microstation and Project Wise). Bentley has announced an interaction with Microsoft Project with which we could assume linkage with budget solutions and project tracking. It is also reinforced with the generation of dynamic printing (dynamic interplot) that allows a map that was sent to print to interact with a conventional pencil that has a built-in camera so that the redline, observations or approvals are automatically obtained.

What can we suppose to be coming

I would not expect less from Bentley, whose smokes are very astral; Sometimes so much that it seems that at some point its designers have had the motto that "Complicated is cool, we are all engineers."

But I can perceive in this smoke, a very useful landing act,
in the sense that Bentley does not want to remain a software that uses strange formats. You want your dgn to know you as popular formats are known. Hopefully they keep the simplicity that exchange standards require.

Then I think the idea is great, not to promote a new format. This we already assumed, (we hardly remember the V7 when everything was 16 bits, and V8 when there were already 32 bits); good to know that we will continue to see the V8 for a long time. And in this, we only have to recognize Bentley's proposal, in its I-model, which is nothing more (and what we want more) than xml, taking from the dgn the characteristics that other programs need to see, under the concept and standard of BIM.

One of the best that is being proposed is that the documentation and the SDK for creating I-model from other applications will be available to third parties. This should open the door to popularize the subject, in application of standards such as CIS / 2, IFC, and ISO 15926. But perhaps with this we will finally see a software for costs and budgets compatible with Microstation; subject in which We have not seen much.

Finally, I think it is good that Bentley does not release much multidisciplinary product. From what I see the applications of mapping, structures, waters, plants, geology and other disciplines will continue to fulfill their specific role on the basic products that now reach three:

• Microstation for the three basic dimensions at the client level.
• ProjectWise for transactional processing and inward integration at a server level.
• AssetWise for the transactional process out, connected or disconnected.