1. What is Bentley PowerCivil?
PowerCivil is a single, low-cost software solution for site modeling, land development and planning. It is a multidiscipline tool that provides integrated capabilities for survey, graphical coordinate geometry (COGO), digital terrain modeling, site grading and design, water and sewer, and storm drainage and street design. Intelligent relationship modeling enables rapid exploration of design scenarios in a visually interactive manner. The software allows the user to work in 2D and 3D – or both.
2. Who uses PowerCivil?
- Civil designers involved in commercial and industrial site/land development
- Surveying professionals with need for low-cost, standalone design tool compatible with all major CAD and survey data formats
- Designers of storm drainage and water/sewer systems
- Civil engineering consultants needing compatibility with leading transportation engineering software systems, without the steep learning curve and high entry cost
3. What types of projects can PowerCivil handle?
PowerCivil can be used for a wide range of land development and planning projects:
- Commercial building, plant and manufacturing sites
- Airports and rail terminals
- Subdivisions, urban complexes, campuses, parks and golf courses
- Dams, mines and landfills
- Drainage, utility and floodplain projects
- Municipal street projects
- Highway corridor studies
4. Why would civil designers elect to use PowerCivil rather than other available land development software?
PowerCivil was designed to function logically along a civil engineer’s “natural” methods of working. It enables users to work simultaneously in multiple views or modes – for example, in plan, profile, cross section and 3D. The productivity improvements are formidable. The designer controls the associativity between objects in the model, so that as design objects are modified, associated features automatically adjust, obeying custom-defined design constraints and intent. You can resolve unsuitable conditions on-the-fly, make design changes interactively, and substantially speed the design process.
5. What business value does PowerCivil offer?
PowerCivil offers a low-cost/high-value investment, with easy startup. Because it is standalone software, you no longer have the headaches of synchronizing releases of your CAD platform and your civil application. The dynamic relationship modeling brings incredible time savings to the civil design process, helping you keep projects on track and meet deadlines. Moreover, PowerCivil ensures you a high quality of deliverables with higher accuracy and expanded use of design data for downstream activities – stakeout, GPS machine-controlled grading, construction, inspection and as-built archival.
6. What are the primary business reasons for choosing PowerCivil?
Beyond the obvious productivity improvements, PowerCivil offers field-to-finish continuity and improves project communication, not only between team members but also with clients and other project stakeholders. In addition, PowerCivil works seamlessly with Bentley tools for survey data management, stakeout, inspection, GPS machine control, and quantities management. The result is better-quality, more predictable projects.
7. How well does PowerCivil support plan production?
The software provides easy-to-use tools for creating plan/profile sheets directly from site designs, ensuring up-to-date, accurate deliverables. Intelligent labeling tools, image clipping, and quantity takeoffs make it your best choice in the production environment. In addition, PowerCivil makes it easy to establish a PDF-based process for electronic delivery of plan sets. You can publish a full range of project deliverables, including intelligent drawings that preserve file levels/layers as optional content, reference file structures, hyperlinks and more.
8. How does PowerCivil ease the Project Manager’s job?
PowerCivil supports easy conformance to standards and removes risk in project delivery. Because PowerCivil integrates multiple engineering disciplines and promotes active sharing of data, it encourages and enables project participants to take better “ownership” responsibility for their respective roles in the project.
9. Is PowerCivil a multi-user solution?
Yes, in fact, PowerCivil promotes collaboration between multiple users. Project team members can work in multiple disciplines, each user referencing and viewing the work of others. The software is designed to handle the entire land development and planning process, with tools that will be used by every member of your engineering office. It includes applications for survey, graphical COGO, digital terrain modeling, storm water and water & sewer design and analysis, geotechnical engineering and more.
10. How does PowerCivil serve enterprise computing objectives?
PowerCivil promotes uniform processes for civil engineering and enables your company to create engineering content that can support a multitude of other processes. Bentley works with leading third-party technology companies to enable you to solve problems with – and make the best use of – the tools you already have at your disposal. PowerCivil is a product that provides the best of Bentley’s leading-edge development and integration efforts. Like all Bentley tools it can be easily customized to suit specific enterprise needs.
11. Is PowerCivil compatible with other leading engineering and CAD software?
Consistent with Bentley’s commitment to standards, PowerCivil provides multi-format support for industry-leading survey data collectors for direct input and output of survey data, native file support for both DGN and DWG data, and import or export of XML data for surfaces and coordinate geometry. What’s more, PowerCivil is compatible with Bentley GEOPAK, Bentley InRoads, and Bentley MX solution families which are used by transportation agencies worldwide for transportation/infrastructure design and engineering.
12. Does PowerCivil read and write LandXML?
Yes.
13. Will PowerCivil read old versions of DWG file?
Yes. PowerCivil actually supports more legacy versions of AutoCAD than AutoCAD 2005; it is compatible with DWG versions AutoCAD 2000 to AutoCAD 2005.
14. What particular technology benefits does PowerCivil offer?
PowerCivil delivers today the intelligent civil modeling technology that the market has been demanding for some time. Built on Bentley’s many years of development in intelligent object-modeling, PowerCivil is the only civil design software on the market that truly integrates the full complement of civil engineering disciplines and supports the full gamut of plan production needs.
15. What is the learning curve with PowerCivil?
While PowerCivil represents leading-edge civil modeling technology, it brings some of the best tools of CAD – familiar to users – and combines them with fundamental civil design concepts and working methodologies. This enables you to maximize your existing knowledge of automation as you leave behind the cumbersome impediments you encounter daily when using tools less focused to the purpose of civil engineering. PowerCivil is driven by a clear yet powerful graphical user interface. In addition, the software includes wizards to guide you in the creation of intelligent land features such as pads, ponds, channels, subdivisions, streets and roads. If deemed necessary, formal training is available from Bentley.
16. Can I use PowerCivil for major road/rail design? Why is Bentley offering another civil solution when it already has GEOPAK, InRoads and MX?
PowerCivil addresses road design in subdivisions and land development projects. If the project requires complex, alignment-driven road/rail design, then one of Bentley’s transportation design solutions would be the ideal choice. The wealth of civil feature modeling capabilities in PowerCivil have been designed specifically to handle a range of civil commercial, industrial and community projects (see the listed project types in Question 3, above). It focuses on design, plan production and construction needs specifically related to these types of projects.
17. I already have LDD and AutoCAD (or Eaglepoint), with investments in training and data. How can I be sure to recover additional investment in PowerCivil?
PowerCivil not only matches the full complement of functionality in these products today, it also offers intelligent object modeling that will not be available for some time to come in Autodesk Civil 3D or other solutions. And because PowerCivil does not require a standalone CAD engine, it does not cause you to suffer unnecessary inconsistencies and upgrade costs inherent to a multiple/separate-product scenario where releases are not synchronized. Over the long haul, PowerCivil provides a direct focus on Civil Engineering so that you don’t have to pay for – or wait for – feature development geared to other disciplines (ex. Architecture).
In addition, the relational object modeling in and of itself more than pays for the cost of moving to PowerCivil. Engineers will be more productive because the software matches the way they naturally work – especially how they want automation to support their tasks and workflows. Managers will be able to maximize resources, saving money and time. Companies will have the potential for pursuing and winning more business.
18. How do I purchase PowerCivil?
PowerCivil can be purchased from your Bentley sales representative.