In another sign that the Apocalypse is closer than you think, Bentley and Autodesk have signed a partnership agreement aimed towards better interoperability in their products. You can read the official spin piece here. Not sure how this all shakes out, but with WisDOT and a few other DOTs having very serious discussions regarding C3D, it seems to me that the boys at Bentley see the train coming and decided to try and limit collateral damage to their bread and butter. We’ll try and get some more information and watch for more developments.
What do you think it means? Comment below!
I think this is more related to the building side than the civil side. Bentley’s BIM products are required by the ACOE on the design side, which is a rather large building customer that covers a large area of the US and abroad. I see the civil side not getting much improvements through this agreement, since we typicaly don’t share data the way the BIM model panacea is proposing.
FDOT has exchanged (as of July 1) their CAiCE seats for Civil 3D seats. FDOT is going to diversify and support both Bentley and Autodesk platforms. The partnership announcement was fantastic news for us, and a sigh of relief as interoperability between foundation MicroStation and AutoCAD was paramount, but also between the verticals like GEOPAK and Civil 3D.