BentleyÝs Integrated Structural Model is designed to act as a central repository for all of BentleyÝs structural engineering products. Greg Corke takes a closer look at this challenging project.

The Manchester Hilton is currently the tallest post-tension concrete residential building in the United Kingdom. The 170 metre tower comprises 49-storeys and BentleyÝs RAM and STAAD products were used throughout the project.

A few years back Bentley Systems had its sights set squarely on the civil engineering, plant design and architecture sectors - structural engineering never really appeared on its radar. But at the tail end of 2005 this all changed with the acquisitions of RAM International and the STAAD line of software from netGuru. Overnight, Bentley had become a major player in the structural design and analysis software sector, but with some 20 odd products in its portfolio, it also inherited the headache of how to get them all to talk each other and share data efficiently.

Data sharing is the foundation of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The industry usually talks about BIM in the context of the architect sharing information with the building services engineer, sharing information with the structural engineer. But BIM is also about sharing information within disciplines, and using a master 3D model to drive the generation of GAs, sections and Bills Of Materials (BOMs). A last minute change to the design used to mean that the associated drawings and BOMs would have to be completely re-worked. With BIM an alteration can be made to the master model and the changes will be automatically reflected in the drawings and BOMs.

With the many facets of BentleyÝs structural software portfolio - from analysis in RAM and STAAD to modelling and documentation in Bentley Structural - the task of sharing and coordinating data is much more complex. You have a lot of independent products which are tailored for different aspects of the structural design process and as such there is potential for a lot of duplication of data. The same design can often be recreated from scratch for design, analysis and documentation and any changes to the design are made manually inside each application

BentleyÝs Integrated Structural Model acts as a central repository for BentleyÝs structural engineering products