Bentley Expert Designer Gas V8i

Comprehensive Utility Network Design

• Organizes and checks facility data according to industry construction standards and company-defined business practices
• Interfaces with work management systems to streamline the process of managing projects from inception to completion
• Operates on multiple GIS platforms, providing flexibility without sacrificing functionality or consistency
• Fully integrated with Bentley Gas, which includes all the functionality of Bentley Map
• Retrieves and submits work requests in batch mode or as scheduled events
• Creates designs online (within a GIS) or offline (outside a GIS) in several formats
• Allows definition of default attributes at both a global level and a feature level, increasing productivity
• Controls graphic layout offsets, infrastructure annotations, and other placement settings through global defaults
• Automatically assigns compatible units to features
• Builds special compatible and macro units
• Easily compares the costs of multiple designs
• Allows users to modify the work details of a design to allow for extra labor and materials
• Provides for adding comments and leader lines to the graphic design to assist construction crews
• Generates bills of materials, cost estimates, and other reports
• Creates construction drawings using built-in or custom plotting templates
• Saves designs as templates for reuse with similar jobs
• Allows users to relocate and replace existing features while automatically preserving connectivity
• Automatically updates spatial and WMS databases throughout the design process
• Creates designs in a point and span mode whether connected to a GIS or not
• Creates designs in the field or in the office with the same user interface, features, and ease-of-use

Open Architecture

• Operates on various geospatial platforms, including field data-capture systems, without any sacrifice in functionality
• Deploys easily with legacy systems as well as third-party business solutions across the enterprise
• Adheres to Open GIS Interoperability Specification (OGC) standards

Intuitive Interface

• Adheres fully to Windows application standards
• Lets users customize the way information is displayed as well as the toolbars, shortcuts, and other navigational tools
• Design Assistant makes designing easy—users drag and drop objects into a design and get automatic compatible unit assignment as well as continuously updated cost information

Workload Management

• Workplace Today, a powerful and configurable data organizer, provides intuitive lists for the user’s pending, past-due, and in-progress work, and can also be tailored to the user’s preferences
• Tracks the timelines of each project and shows which ones need attention
• Calculates the duration of each project and stores notes about project details

Multiple Design Formats

• Lets users produce designs that are separate from work requests
• Lets users create designs in three different formats: GIS, Offline, and Template

Drag and Drop Placement

• Provides handy catalogs of features and units (macro, compatible, and material)
• Lets users select a feature from the catalog and drag it to the desired work location, including the path level
• Automatically adds the feature if the resulting configuration complies with the current business rules

Dynamic Cost Estimates

• Provides real-time cost estimates for a design as it is being created 
• Continuously calculates and displays the estimated cost of all labor, materials, and equipment at each work location and for the entire design
• Provides instant detailed cost breakdowns via integrated report generation using Seagate Crystal Reports

Built-In Data Model

• Provides a built-in framework for organizing and manipulating data structures that utility companies use most often in modeling their networks
• Can be easily modified to fit a company’s business processes

Integrated Work Management

• Manages work requests and designs in either a stand-alone mode or in combination with a Work Management System
• Provides seamless integration with an external Work Management System (WMS)
• Supports the most widely used WMS products on the market today
• Keeps track of the lifecycle status and scheduled due date of every job as it progresses from initiation through completion
• Treats work requests and designs as discrete data sets and stores them in separate folders
• Lets users quickly link several designs to a work request to evaluate different construction scenarios before selecting the final design for implementation
• Provides access to a design (and its facility, unit, and cost data) from the work request
• Lets users find information faster and organize it in different ways for viewing—by due date, project type, work request name, customer name, and more 
• Automatically replaces old designs with the finalized design and work request
• Updates the main geospatial environment in a single operation to incorporate as-built data

Geospatial Format

• Users can work in their choice of GIS environments for designs containing spatial data from the spatial database, such as coordinates of work locations and other geometry

Offline Format

• Provides design capabilities while working in the field without a network connection
• Transfers offline facilities into the geospatial system when pointing to their locations
• Lets users switch back and forth between offline and geospatial formats as often as needed

Template Format

• Supports all basic design tasks, such as creating work locations, assigning features and compatible units, and generating cost estimates and bills of materials
• Contains information about work locations and work details
• Gathers coordinates from the geospatial system and applies them to the template’s work locations

Automated Layout

• Offers a comprehensive set of configurable tools for laying out features quickly, efficiently, and consistently
• Employs powerful placement logic based on mapping and construction standards as well as user-defined business rules
• Places valid combinations of multiple features and annotations in a single operation and lets the user temporarily suspend these placement rules

Construction Unit Defaults

• Supports unit data in the form of macro units, compatible units, and material units and offers a number of options for assigning units to the work locations of a design
• Enables users to accept the default unit that the company has set up for the selected feature, or lets them replace it with another standard unit
• Enables users to create customized compatible units to reflect a job’s extra costs; compatible unit data can be loaded and updated from an external system

Powerful Editing Tools

• Lets users make changes simultaneously to an entire group of features, even if the facilities are of different types

Enables Easy Feature Replacement with One Click

• Provides tools for adding facilities and annotations at a single location

Standard and Custom Reporting

• Generates a wide variety of standard reports: cost estimates, cost comparisons, as-built comparisons, plant account reports, bills of materials (both major and minor), and design orders
• Compiles reports using Seagate Crystal Reports; templates can be easily customized, and information can be accessed with any Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) reporting tool

Data Validation

• Eliminates the need to enter data multiple times, reducing the chances for error
• Prevents many data error problems such as invalid facility connectivity and invalid data dependencies
• Supports configuration to automatically derive new feature data from existing features so that dependent data will always be inserted correctly the first time

Context-Sensitive Help

• Makes it easy to get quick answers to questions about a wide array of features
• Includes “smart” topic headings, synchronized navigation and content panes, and an interactive table of contents and index