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New Export
Tool Puts Ideas on the Map for All to See
3/27/2006
By
Tom Nicholson
No matter how difficult the construction of
a project turns out to be, most planners would agree that getting
non-technical stakeholders to understand the design in the first
place may be one of the hardest parts of all.
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Right
There.Tool puts ideas in context for
easy viewing. |
Now, Bentley Systems Inc., Exton, Pa., has
put an export link in MicroStation design software that lets users
reference plans to geographic locations and export data in the file
format of Google Earth, a free program that lets users view maps
and satellite images of locations all over the world. By linking
the products, Microstation users get a tool to quickly plant 2-D
and 3-D designs of structures on images of the site, which can be
viewed by anyone using a free downloadable viewer from Google Earth.
“The value for me at least, is that I
see Google Earth as kind of like PDFs and Acrobat Reader. It’s
everywhere,” says beta tester Shawn Foster, engineering CADD
applications manager at HNTB, Kansas City, Kan. “I can get
design information into a format that is pretty easily accessible
by everybody,” he says. “Typically, a lot of stakeholders
involved in projects are not very CAD-literate, but I can use this
to put the project into a context for them. It just makes my job
a lot easier.”
MicroStation files in the Google Earth format
can also have links attached to points to pull up windows with more
detail, such as renderings of the view from that location, or spreadsheets,
or any supporting data. Bentley SELECT subscribers can download
the connection software for use with MicroStation V8 2004 Edition.
It is delivered within MicroStation V8 XM Edition.
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