CADDManager on April 30th, 2007

Wow – what a day!

Half of the day was taken up by Keynote addresses. A parade of Bentley folks speaking to the issues of the day and the plans for tomorrow.

First up – Malcolm Walters – COO

He mentioned that there were over 2000 in attendance and that the whole event was about learning. In fact there were over 30,000 learning credits being offered at the event. This is a combination of AIA units, Bentley units and more.

Five big screens up front and four in the middle of the room made the event easy to follow. There were some times that got a little dry and the presenter turned into a teleprompter reader, but overall it was a collection of good presentations.

The few dry spots were more than made up for in content. Greg Bentley, CEO showered the room with an overload of project examples of successes with the tools. Showcase after showcase of effective firms using Bentley tools.

One item that I was just hearing about is the Bentley Careers site at www.becareers.org. Free software for educational institutions at all levels. Free books and more. It is amazing how CAD and BIM tools are being introduced to High Schools and Middle Schools and pushing even earlier in the students experience. Exciting stuff.

Other items mentioned included:

On-Demand E-Learning
New Passport licensing model
IFC Certifications
ProjectWise Online – Hosted ProjectWise sites

One thing that was mentioned by Bhupinder Singh, SVP of Bentley Software, was the online “Compatibility Zone” tool – where you can go and select your tool or task and see what Bentley tools can interoperate or produce your output.

Of note was a short discussion of how stable the file format has been since Microstation V5 until now. I know many firms that are using SE, J, V8 and more – all on the same files.

And lastly – Buddy Cleveland, SVP of Applied Research, reinforced the Bentley dedication to researching new tools and technology.

The BE Awards dinner is tonight – more info on the outcome tomorrow.

I ran in to Shawn Foster of HNTB – We connected at the AIA LFRT CIO event in Kansas City a few months back. He presented on Sunday related to Microstation topics. It was good to see him.

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