I had a chance at the end of last year to have a virtual interview with Ed Mueller, Chief Marketing Officer of Bentley Systems. It was in the form of questions and answers via email.
Here you go…
There is a big push toward BIM. What is Bentley doing to advance this push?
Our BIM software empowers the design, construction, and operation of all types of buildings and facilities around the world, from the conventional to some of the most inspiring projects of our time. Because BIM has become a new way to approach the design and documentation of building projects, distributed teams can now share information more effectively throughout the building lifecycle and make better-informed decisions.
While CAD has served the AEC community valuably for decades, it has largely been used as an aid to documentation. BIM builds on the capabilities of CAD through discipline-specific applications that inform and enhance design, construction, and operations as well. BIM not only manages graphics, but also information that allows the automatic generation of drawings and reports, design analysis, schedule simulation, and facilities management.
For example, the Bentley Architecture BIM application provides seamless integration across the lifecycle of facilities. Its ability to support multidisciplinary workgroups and global teams allows them to build as one and gain a distinct advantage over stand-alone applications.
In addition, our BIM software includes energy analysis and simulation tools for high-performance building design. Our Hevacomp and Tas products accurately predict a building’s energy consumption, CO2 emissions, operating costs, and occupant comfort. By offering a comprehensive suite of industry-leading BIM and energy simulation tools, Bentley is able to provide today’s professionals with these capabilities and more, facilitating the productive delivery of sustainable high-performance buildings.
Bentley’s GenerativeComponents enables designers to explore more possibilities, in less time, create better designs, and efficiently create and manage complex geometric relationships. Empowered by computational methods, designers can direct their creativity to deliver inspired sustainable buildings that are freer in form and use innovative materials and assemblies. GenerativeComponents facilitates this by allowing the quick exploration of a broad range of “what-if” alternatives for even the most complex buildings
To inform decisions, GenerativeComponents is integrated with BIM, analysis, and simulation software, providing feedback on building materials, assemblies, systems performance, and environmental conditions. This integration also ensures that intent becomes reality by enabling designs to accurately and efficiently flow through to detailed production and fabrication.
Many firms are working in mixed environments or working with others who have differing CAD/BIM software. How is Bentley making the transfer of data between systems better?
With global economic uncertainty and ever-increasing shortfalls in engineering resources being just two of the challenges facing infrastructure organizations today, there has never been a more pressing time for innovative technology. It is imperative and, indeed, a responsibility to provide our users with the capabilities they need to increase their cost-efficiencies and maximize the returns on their investments in innovation.
Therefore, critical advantages of the V8i portfolio include 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, and be 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.