Autodesk and Bentley’s Unprecedented Interoperability Agreement

On Tuesday, July 8, 2008, the unthinkable happened. Autodesk and Bentley hosted a joint press conference at which they announced an agreement to expand interoperability between their respective portfolios of AEC software. They are proposing to accomplish this by directly working with each other's file formats and integrating their applications through the use of their APIs. I found this news not just unbelievable but extremely odd, given the combative relationship the two companies have had for so many years. This month's "Building the Future" article takes a look back at their past relationship characterized by many disagreements and criticisms, and provides an analysis of the new interoperability agreement, including both the overt and possible underlying motivations that may have led to it.

Coming up next is a review of DProfiler, a "macro model" BIM solution that can be used at the planning and conceptual design phase to get an accurate cost estimate of a proposed design. It does this by integrating RS Means within the application, with over 20,000 assembly cost databases that are pulled immediately to provide an interactive cost estimate on the fly as you are modeling the design. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, since it is targeted towards the conceptual design stage. It should be interesting to see not only how it works but also how it compares with the more common BIM applications such as Revit, Bentley, and ArchiCAD.

Another product that will be reviewed this month is the recently released Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, which features an impressive array of new capabilties relevant to AEC, such as the ability to combine multiple file formats in a single PDF portfolio, enhanced review capabilities with the ability to synchronize document views, ability to embed and play video within PDF, improvements in batch processing of AutoCAD files, and IFC import capabilities that provide support for BIM workflows.

The Viewpoint series returns with an article entitled "BIM: When Will It Enter “The Ours” Zone?" by Stewart Carroll of Beck Technology, and in the Tips and Tricks series, we will have tutorials on the creative use of ArchiCAD's Complex Profiles and simplifying the creation of Revit Families by Nesting.

Thank you for your interest, and do continue to check out both the AECbytes Blog for reader comments and the VendorHub to get information about the technology providers in AEC.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > July 2008