2013 - Geoinformatics

11
Faraz Ravi
Object animation in Bentley Pointools V8i.
agement use cases. Bentley Systems has
acknowledged this and created a number
of product offerings that facilitate the use of
point cloud files in various ways. A new,
recent offering is Bentley Pointools V8i,
which was released in January 2013 and
is geared towards point-cloud-centric workflows.
The product now includes point-cloud
differencing and clash detection functionality.
This makes differences and clashes easy
to detect and visualize. Commenting on the
release, Ravi says: “Bentley Pointools V8i is
a stand-alone product that offers a very highperformance
environment in which users
perform editing operations, and produce
communication and simulation content from
the point clouds.”
But the most important feature of Bentley
Pointools V8i is the ability to arrange the
data into different, more logical layers, making
it much easier to visualize and work with
them. Says Ravi: “For example, if you have
an oil rig and want to be able to separate
out the different floors, or you have aerial
LiDAR data and you grid that into different
grid cells, this can be done with Bentley
Pointools V8i.”
Released simultaneously with Bentley
Pointools V8i were two iWare apps: Bentley
Pointools View and Bentley Pointools
PODcreater. Bentley Pointools View is meant
for point-cloud data visualization and sharing
and Bentley Pointools PODcreator for
converting laser scans to the POD file format.
Ravi: “The Bentley Pointools POD -
creater app is geared towards the batch
conversion of different file formats into the
POD format. This is for users who don’t necessarily
want to consume a Pointools V8i
license with a conversion process that can
take time when the files are large. To enable
users to do that offline, take advantage of
When asked how this product relates to
Bentley’s existing product offerings that
involve point-cloud use (Bentley Descartes,
ProjectWise Point-cloud Services, and
Bentley Map), Ravi answers that Bentley
Pointools V8i is being used higher up in the
workflow than the other three product offerings,
which are for infrastructure design
workflows. Ravi: “Bentley Pointools V8i is
perhaps slightly closer to collecting and processing
and using point-cloud data, which
can then be used in design workflows in
Bentley Map and Bentley Descartes, and
can be shared through and integrated with
ProjectWise Point-cloud Services. This is possible
as all the applications are using the
POD file format.”
Clash detection
June 2013