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Pointools, Bentley Descartes steroids

Descartes is the Bentley’s product equivalent (in part) to what Raster Design makes from AutoDesk. Usually the most utility that until now has been promoted is the images’ treatment, even though it has much more to offer; I remember just having spoken a couple of times about the creation of vector from flat scanned data and also about the images’ fusion with clipping polygons.

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But Bentley wants to take this software beyond an issue of avant-garde: point clouds, subject with which have been insisting in the last year, to the extent that at the last conference in Amsterdam used the metaphorical phrase “Steroids for Bentley Descartes”.

Let’s look at two strategies that seem to be notable in that effort by the I-models and their return to the talent.

The purchase of Pointools Ltd

This is a company that developed one of the most innovative products in the point clouds management. Despite being a young tool, surprisingly grew thanks to its openness to work with major equipment manufacturers and software simultaneously.

Half of the growth was achieved with Pointools Suite, a very attractive tool for managing data with a surprising agility, essential requirement in these files that don’t use thousands of data but million. The basic functionality became quite attractive, in matters such as unnecessary obstacles filtering, smart filtering with recolor and high quality animation.

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The rest was reached with Vortex which includes an API on which were integrated not only Bentley but AutoDesk, Rhino, Sketchup, also Trimble, Leica, Topcon among others. Perhaps the most attractive was the requested interoperability which added to the files compactness and rich content made it very attractive.

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The search for human talent

But there is much more than a great tool for Bentley to think on the subject. The two geniuses behind Pointools were strategically followed, one of them Joe Croser, who was Bentley Director of International Marketing between 2005 and 2010, time at which the company went from 300 to 500 million.

Croser left Bentley and between 2010 to 2011 as Pointools Vice President developed a strategy of growth and penetration in the market that increased sales a 90% and raised the product value by 50% until it ended in his magisterial act with the company’s purchase by Bentley Systems in 2011. Croser now has his own company: Oundle Group, where he carried Larry Reagan, another former Bentley and they are dedicated now in what surely can do best: help companies grow.

The other character behind the Pointools growth was Faraz Ravi, co-founder and CEO for almost 10 years that after purchase became the Products Director within Bentley Systems.

While Bentley did not continue with Joe Croser, intuition tells us that Bentley continued recognizing his ability. He accepted the alliance to work together so as Bentley can integrate the Vortex API and finally bought the complete product including the company. That’s called to recognize a talent that is out of our reach but not its product.

In Faraz Ravi case, just a few days ago has been integrated as Chairman of the International 3D images Systems Committee known as ASTM, where there are created standards for this topic. Place this piece in that place will make that most of interoperability efforts achieved with Pointools are adopted into the standards of this line which by the way has a irreversible potential and gradual integration with remote sensing.


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clip_image005[4]So with the Select Series 3 we now have a Descartes that, beyond raster data treatment, integrates creation, editing, theme and point cloud modeling.

  • It has Microstation’s logic work. For example one can select two points’ axes, using a fence that filter obstacles; next make a warp to a 3D face object’s surface, and then stretch if necessary to extend a part of the existing face that has an irregular shape. Then make a right click mouse button to convert it to a reusable texture.
  • With V8i platform’s efficiency by allowing data management rendering quite effectively for a long time, reason that has led HiFi in engineering and architecture large companies where Bentley is very well positioned.
  • With the addition of Pointools features that will no longer be called like that but for becoming in Descartes steroids.

We’ll see how they get positioned beyond the developed countries where the modeling of intelligent cities is a wave of interest, but in our countries goes slower by the priority on more basic geospatial field issues where many efforts are lost by our feeble administrative careers and shortsighted officials in key positions.

Learn more of Bentley Descartes.

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One comment

  1. jak przytyć

    Gwarantuję polecić ten artykuł znajomym doskonała robota.

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