Bentley driving me nuts

[Anonymous]

I have been put in charge of exploring Bentley because of its ability to bridge different formats seeing that we use Revit and AC. #1 problem was getting any information other than the same sales pitch we received 4 times. #2 Then to even get them to return emails or phone calls was a task within its self.

I finally got a trial version but was told by 3 people that work at Bentley/MS that they don't like to give out trials because it is so hard to use that people get turned off by it before they give it a chance. (Have to agree)

To top that off, the impression that I was given by superiors is that we need to learn it on our own and as fast as possible. (Thanks!)

I have a sneaking suspicion that they do not realize what it is like to have to learn a THIRD bim product, or one for that matter....

[Anonymous]

Sad but true. Bentley has a lot of great capabilities but its lack of ease of use means that its days are numbered. Bentley is a dead end. This coming from a guy who used to sell it...

[Thomas Holm]

metanoia wrote:
Bentley is a dead end.

Have to agree, in general. I used Microstation 1989-1998. They embarked the sloping plane in the middle of the nineties. The final nail in the independant coffin was their agreement with Autodesk last year.

However, I do think they still have a niche as file manager and coordinator for very large projects, due to Microstation's still unsurpassed external reference file management, and integer internal calculations, which means that precision doesn't deteriorate depending on distance from origin.

[Anonymous]

Well we were looking at facilities manager, but its not a BIM application as far as I can tell. I guess I need to explore that route furthur.

I don't want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none, I want to be a AC and Revit master

Pssstt...I like AC way better. My master taught me well. lol

[Erika Epstein]

JLKilgore wrote:
I have been put in charge of exploring Bentley because of its ability to bridge different formats seeing that we use Revit and AC.

Could you expand on what you mean by 'bridge'? What you are hoping to accomplish with this [third CAD]software?

[Anonymous]

My employer wants to be versatile in all BIM products and Bentley was able to use the live....I am drawing a blank. Being able to draw from all the different formats into one central file.

Of course all this is coming from the sales pitch and I am not clear on whether it works well or not. From my experience, I am not going to be surprised if its not a little fluffed up in its claims.

[Erika Epstein]

JLKilgore wrote:
My employer wants to be versatile in all BIM products.

Why?What is M. Employer hoping to gain from this?

[Anonymous]

The grand scheme is to have a department that has experts in all BIM applications so that we can send out consultants to either kick start projects or consult all the way through them without the client having to hire a BIM team.

All this is in theory.

[Thomas Holm]

JLKilgore wrote:
.... Being able to draw from all the different formats into one central file.

Of course all this is coming from the sales pitch and I am not clear on whether it works well or not. From my experience, I am not going to be surprised if its not a little fluffed up in its claims.

Microstation is strong in importing and exporting different DWG flavors, and you can save sets of different settings for different apps - as long as they all can handle DWG in some way. (Don't use Archicad's DGN translator).

So I think the idea of using Microstation as a coordination hub is good, and that's the way it's used in many large projects today. I'd still prefer Archicad for modeling as far as possible.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't mind just learning the coordination part of Bentley since I am more versed in AC but the job we are chasing is for the core of engineers and they insist it is 100% Bentley.

UGh