Bentley’s AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition

EXTON, PA, U.S.A. – September 18, 2017 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, a leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing infrastructure, today announced the availability of AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition, Bentley’s building information modeling (BIM) application designed for building projects of significant size and/or engineering complexity, and which are typically characterized by the challenges of combining vertical construction and horizontal infrastructure (like roads, railways, utilities, etc.). On such projects, design and project delivery firms often have broad responsibilities for multiple project delivery disciplines and across subcontractors and joint venture organizations.

Users of AECOsim Building Designer V8i have demonstrated its versatility in a wide range of project types. Among Bentley’s 2017 Be Inspired Awards nominations, 63 projects credited AECOsim, including 15 of the 51 finalists, in projects as diverse as bridges, airports, Olympic sports facilities, mining, manufacturing, offshore, municipal, power generation, utility transmission and distribution, and water and wastewater treatment facilities. Nominations also cited GenerativeComponents, a feature within AECOsim Building Designer that provides computational design capabilities to explore iterative design ideas and embed design intent with design constraints and relationships to improve design quality and performance.

The new AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition shares a comprehensive modeling environment with all of Bentley’s CONNECT Edition applications. Without a comprehensive modeling environment, engineers and architects have had to struggle with complex data exchange, resulting in information loss and repeated translations, or even resort to force-fitting a BIM application beyond its intended use to model geometry, which is lacking in BIM intelligence.

AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition integrates the work of architects, structural engineers, and MEP engineers in a single application, and now extends its scalability by leveraging CONNECT Edition’s comprehensive modeling environment. The new release provides seamless, translation-free, intra-operability with Bentley’s full multi-discipline portfolio of design, analytical, and construction modeling applications.

All CONNECT Edition applications, including MicroStation CONNECT Edition, benefit from the deliverables production automation inherent in the CONNECT Edition’s documentation center. The documentation center greatly improves the consistency, quality, and efficiency of drawing set organization. AECOsim Building Designer also benefits from reality modeling, by which existing conditions are captured through photos and/or scans and converted into engineering-ready reality meshes with Bentley’s ContextCapture, bringing the actual geo-coordinated context directly into the AECOsim design environment.

Santanu Das, Bentley Systems’ senior vice president, design modeling, said, “This is an exciting time for Bentley as we complete the delivery of our CONNECT Edition applications. AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition enables our users to improve their productivity and to collaborate across multiple disciplines by sharing content and data in a seamless workflow through a comprehensive modeling environment. As we continue to make advancements in BIM technology, this version of AECOsim Building Designer helps them to collaborate on projects of any scale or multidisciplinary complexity, and automate the creation of deliverables for all stakeholders. And now that CONNECTservices are made available to Bentley application subscribers, we bring the collaborative advantages of ProjectWise to every user of AECOsim Building Designer.”

Available to all Bentley application subscribers, CONNECTservices represent Bentley’s commitment to address the requirements that its user organizations face in going digital. In a digital world, users learn differently, take their work wherever they go, and collaborate with highly diverse and dispersed teams. Leveraging Microsoft Azure, CONNECTservices are fundamental to the use of any Bentley application. Learn more about CONNECTservices online.

EiPM, a Barcelona-based engineering and architecture firm, is an early adopter of AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition, and is using the application to deliver complex projects. Xavier Coll, BIM manager and project manager, research and development for EiPM, commented, “It’s a quantum leap. The new interface is totally clean and user-friendly with spectacular improvements in interoperability and usability of the interface in all tools. It now has more intuitive workflows, which contribute to increased productivity and reliability. Undoubtedly, this new version is the best comprehensive BIM modeling software on the market.”

Related images:

Image: AECOsim Building Designer CE disciplines

Description: AECOsim Building Designer CONNECT Edition is Bentley’s premier multi-discipline building design application for enabling BIM processes for design, engineering analysis, document production, and visualization. It provides integrated tools for architects, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers.

Image: GenerativeComponents and AECOsim Building Designer

Description: GenerativeComponents installs as a Product Companion feature within AECOsim Building Designer. It provides computational design to explore iterative design ideas and embed design intent with design constraints and relationships.

Image: AECOsim Building Designer CE_LumenRT

Description: Bentley LumenRT is a companion application to create stunning visualizations to both enliven and help communicate your designs.

Image: AECOsim Building Designer ContextCapture

Description: To provide design context for existing conditions, point clouds and reality models can be referenced to the design model.

Image Attribution: Images courtesy of Bentley Systems

About the CONNECT Edition

The CONNECT Edition of Bentley’s infrastructure engineering software is built on a comprehensive modeling environment to support the delivery of infrastructure projects and to improve the performance of projects and assets from design through construction and operations.

CONNECT Edition applications feature CONNECTservices, which enable project teams to improve collaboration, ensure mastery of Bentley software, and empower individuals with the personal mobility to work from any location.

Leveraging the reach and computing power of Microsoft Azure, and supporting a hybrid environment that includes on-premise servers, desktop applications, and Bentley apps, the CONNECT Edition provides an unprecedented level of information mobility for advancing infrastructure