Bentley answers your questions about the Bentley and Autodesk agreement to expand interoperability between their portfolios of AEC software
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1. As a result of this agreement, what is now possible that wasn’t previously?
- As opposed to relying on “best-guess” engineering (necessarily “after the fact”), as is presently the case, now effectively every AEC desktop with platform or application products from Autodesk or Bentley can have native code from both Autodesk and Bentley (RealDWG* and the new Bentley DGN libraries) to enable interchangeably reading and writing DGN and DWG with “trusted” fidelity;
- The level of information exchange with such full and trusted comprehension can now be raised above the basic DGN and DWG format to include the intelligence interpreted by available “object enabler” code (and analogous capabilities from Bentley, as applicable);
- At even higher levels of application intelligence, users and project teams (with software licensed from both companies), can be offered “real-time workflow” interoperability scenarios, taking advantage of available APIs. An indication of the significance of this aspect is that Bentley is already recognized by Autodesk as its largest development partner (which, to date, has occurred largely through acquisitions and can now be expanded by design);
- As between Bentley and Autodesk, in addition to their respective software “toolkits,” each will now provide technical support to the other, as required, to enable each of these levels of potential interoperability to be expeditiously achieved – and more timely sustained in regard to new releases from the other party. As a result, instead of each wasting resources on redundant file-format development, the companies' efforts can be applied to making interoperability as complete and intelligent as possible, in the progression above.
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2. What is the new relationship between Bentley and Autodesk?
The only change is that the two companies are, for the first time in history, parties to a reciprocal cross-licensing agreement. In addition, Bentley continues to be Autodesk’s “largest development partner,” by virtue of the fact that many Bentley applications that run on the MicroStation platform also run on AutoCAD.
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3. How does this agreement fit into Bentley’s AEC strategy?
This agreement, along with IFC support in its Building solutions, ISO 15926 foundations in its OpenPlant portfolio, OGC’s WMS and WFS support in its Geospatial applications, LandXML support in Civil, and support of PDFand other global standards across all its products and solutions, further extends Bentley’s longstanding commitment to openness leading to streamlined collaborative workflows and improved productivity for project teams across the infrastructure lifecycle.
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Bentley’s support of open international standards was recently evidenced this past January with the announcement of Bentley OpenPlant, the first range of software products for the creation and management of plant infrastructure inherently based on the ISO 15926 data model. At the same time, Bentley launched OpenPlant PowerPID, the only commercial P&ID solution to be based on a completely open data model. In May, at the BE Conference in Baltimore, Bentley introduced OpenPlant PDx Manager, a new software tool built on ISO 15926 that makes existing plant design system data, such as PDS data, open and interoperable with other applications.
In addition, in April of 2007, Bentley announced that Bentley Architecture, an advanced Building Information Modeling (BIM) application for architectural design and construction documentation, successfully passed certification for the coordination view of IFC2x3. Implemented on the common technology platform for Bentley’s building applications, the IFC2x3 translator is also available in Bentley Structural, Bentley Building Mechanical Systems, and Bentley Building Electrical Systems.
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4. Why did Bentley and Autodesk agree to this?
Bentley and Autodesk recognize that many users employ their products in mixed environments, and this agreement will help them continue to be able to do so. It will also help create new opportunities for these types of mixed environments among organizations and projects that previously were constrained to a single vendor. Bentley and Autodesk have developed or acquired so many “interleaving applications” that both want to pursue these new opportunities.
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5. What specifically is changing in terms of Autodesk’s access to Bentley’s technology and Bentley’s access to Autodesk’s technology?
Bentley is licensing new DGN libraries to Autodesk to facilitate read/write with trusted fidelity from Autodesk applications. In turn, Autodesk is licensing its RealDWG* toolkit to Bentley to assure read/write with trusted fidelity from Bentley applications. In addition, both companies are giving each other permission and technical support to use their respective publicly supported API’s and development materials to enable deeper interoperability within workflows across project teams.
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6. How does this agreement impact BIM workflows?
As innovations such as BIM are adopted – and as Autodesk and Bentley each expand their portfolios with diverse engineering and analysis applications to create and leverage intelligent models for better performing assets – the two companies' respective tools are increasingly complementary when used either concurrently or within tightly iterative workflows. Accordingly, the second aspect of the agreement assures reciprocal interoperability at the level of existing APIs. This interoperability within BIM workflows enhances the opportunity for the AEC community to raise collaboration and project efficiencies to new levels.
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7. What examples illustrate the benefits of real-time interoperability between Bentley and Autodesk applications by encouraging reciprocal use of available APIs?
The benefits of the agreement to users fall into two categories: those stemming from reuse of information and those resulting from the newly enhanced freedom for project teams to choose their preferred technology for a given task, without having to worry so much about compatibility considerations.
By agreeing to support the reciprocal use of their available APIs, Autodesk and Bentley will enable AEC project teams to use products from both providers within integrated workflows. For instance, we could say that an architect working with Autodesk’s Revit platform and a structural engineer working with Bentley’s STAAD and RAM structural products could iterate between design and analysis of a Building Information Model (BIM) to more easily evaluate alternatives.
The interoperability benefits will accrue to the users of the ProjectWise collaboration system by extending the scope of applications and information that can be managed and published, and to the users of ProjectWise Navigator by the additional capabilities of rich information aggregation, visualization, and simulation.
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Both of these categories of benefits may lead to cost savings and workflow efficiencies. Moreover, they can open the door to increased collaboration and, ultimately, better designs and construction.
A 2004 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology identified over $16 billion in annual savings for certain capital projects in the U.S. that would result if today’s impediments to systems interoperability were eliminated. Many observers think that compatibility issues between Autodesk software and Bentley software create an attractive “sweet spot” for yielding and sharing such savings.
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8. What are Bentley’s plans for using Autodesk’s DWG software libraries?
In addition to Bentley’s across-the-board DWG support in MicroStation and its derivatives, a number of Bentley products run on AutoCAD, and ProjectWise endeavors to manage both DGN- and DWG-based workflows. Based on this agreement, Bentley will immediately have access and rights to RealDWG*, so all of its product planners and applicable developers will now begin to plan for the use and deployment of these libraries – and Autodesk APIs– across all product lines, presumably to be introduced in the next release after “Athens” in each case.
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*This product includes Autodesk ® DWG™ technology