Participation on the iWare Apps site, by a varied audience that includes many new to Bentley, is impressive and growing. It provides a clear indication of the previously unmet demand among the infrastructure community for interoperability tools. The new offerings announced today extend the reach of architectural, engineering, and associated business data within information models for much broader use, through widely deployed business analytical tools and throughout enterprise systems supporting intelligent infrastructure assets.

Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley said, “Until now, it has not been possible to access the intelligence contained in AEC information modeling formats through business tools, for analytics or to flow into enterprise systems. So the value of the work of infrastructure design professionals was stranded by the opaque structure of ‘design files’ – especially for the most useful information models, which result from collaboration across applications, disciplines, and contributors, over time. Now, through i-models and our new iWare Apps, the business value of infrastructure designs can be transparently realized. With simple i-model drivers, business users can pull ‘live’ AEC information modeling formats, through familiar data structures, into their familiar analytical environments, and onward to enterprise systems. Finally, AEC projects and owners can benefit from ‘straight-through processing’ – and infrastructure professionals’ work can be fully valued!”

The new offerings include i-model drivers for Excel, Access, Crystal Reports, and Visual Studio, the Bentley DGN Reader for Windows 7, Bentley ODBC Driver for Windows 7, Bentley FlexUnits, and the AGS Toolkit. These iWare Apps join those already available, including Bentley View for interacting with AEC models and drawings, apps for Autodesk Revit users, and apps supporting Integrated Structural Modeling (ISM), all of which are available for download at no cost at www.bentley.com/iWare.