Bentley Systems
Bentley Systems, Incorporated manufactures design software.
Bentley Systems is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, USA and has branch offices in over 40 countries, mainly for development and sale.
Bentley's main competitors are Autodesk, Intergraph, ESRI, Nemetschek and AVEVA in the fields of AEC, GIS and CAD software.
History
Keith A. Bentley and his brother Barry J. Bentley founded Bentley Systems in 1984. They brought in 1985 the commercial version of Pseudo station on the market which users of Intergraph's Igds (Interactive Graphics Design System), the use of low-cost graphics terminals for viewing and editing of designs allowed. Previously, only by special workstations in conjunction with VAX computer systems was possible to access such designs.
The success of pseudo- station convinced that the market was ready for a stand-alone PC-based CAD system. Tests showed that the time available IBM AT personal computer with Intel 80286 processor had enough computing power, disk speed and graphics capabilities for this task. So in 1986 MicroStation Version 1 was released, with the user files from the VAX system could load directly to the PC and could indicate there and plot.
Software
The main software from Bentley 's MicroStation, a 2D/3D-CAD-Plattform. By means of this platform will be created by the Bentley Software Division and third-party special applications. For example GeoGraphics is an extension of the MicroStation to geographical and spatial applications from Bentley Geospatial. Frequently bought Bentley other companies whose products complement the Bentley products, so bought Bentley, for example, in July 2004 the company Haestad Methods to tools for water / wastewater modeling and simulation to be able to add to the Geospatial software. Bentley develops its products as BIM (Building Information Modeling) for architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. This technology allows fine control over the entire design and construction process to billing and maintenance and is therefore used increasingly in CAAD.
Furthermore Bentley ProjectWise sells a solution called for document control and project management. With GenerativeComponents Bentley provides a program for parametric modeling specific for architects and engineers in the building design. Bentley Geospatial in the Netherlands is mainly due to the former ISIS Benelux BV represented.
The current versions of most products, Bentley appeared in the fall of 2008 and are referred to with V8i.