Interoperability is one of the industryÝs constant thorny issues. Proprietary CAD formats, like the worldÝs languages, create a virtual Babel and generate barriers to understanding engineering information. Martyn Day examines the latest news from Autodesk and Bentley.

Interoperability is a critical issue for users of design and engineering software. A 2004 study by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology found that users bear direct costs of almost $16 billion annually from time wasted due to inadequate AEC software interoperability. In news that shocked the industry, Autodesk and Bentley Systems, strong competitors, announced an agreement to expand interoperability between their portfolios of Architectural, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) software. Autodesk and Bentley will exchange software libraries, including Autodesk RealDWG and Bentley DGN, to improve the ability to read and write the companiesÝ respective DWG and DGN formats in mixed environments with greater fidelity. In addition, the two companies agreed to facilitate interoperability between their AEC applications through supporting the reciprocal use of available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Interoperability issues between applications like Autodesk Revit Architecture (bottom) and BentleyÝs MicroStation V8 (top) could be a thing of the past with this new landmark agreement between the two AEC software giants.

In short, this means that Bentley gets to have direct access to DWG via RealDWG and will get API access and technical support for applications developed for AutoCAD, Revit and other Autodesk AEC applications. Bentley users will also be able to benefit from being able to run AutoCAD-based object enablers in the enabled Bentley products. In return, Autodesk gets access to BentleyÝs MicroStation, ProjectWise and other AEC product development tools, and Bentley will develop a ÙRealDGNÝ type of library for Autodesk to include in its products. This will limit reverse engineering and errors and will enable the two companies to develop products for both companiesÝ customers.

Autodesk vs Bentley history

Without a doubt, Autodesk is the biggest CAD software company in the world by volume, having shipped millions of copies of its flagship drafting tool, AutoCAD, all over the globe. While Autodesk sells volume products through resellers, Bentley on the other hand, goes to market largely through its direct sales team and has had a great deal of success supplying vertical solutions of its MicroStation CAD platform to a number of markets that Autodesk has had less impact in, including Plant, Civil/Transport Engineering, and Geospatial. Where Bentley and Autodesk have a long history of competing is in the AEC market, with Autodesk winning on numbers but Bentley being the choice of more signature architects and big architectural practices, with nearly 90 percent of the ENR (Engineering News Record) Top Design Firms being Bentley subscribers.

With Autodesk dominating in numbers, itÝs hardly surprising that the DWG file format of AutoCAD is the de-facto standard in the AEC space. In fact, as vanilla AutoCAD and LT are so widely used in all industries, itÝs pretty hard to find a design space where the DWG format isnÝt popular. This has caused all sorts of data translation issues for Bentley and therefore its customers and the industry at large. Bentley had to constantly reverse engineer the DWG format and try to support it within the context of MicroStation. While working out what the contents of the DWG format is not such a big deal, mapping these elements to MicroStation elements are where the problems really get complicated. The early releases of MicroStation only supported 63 levels or layers, while in AutoCAD you could have as many as you wanted. This was further exacerbated when industry-standard layering conventions defined 256 layers, which MicroStation could obviously not support. So, mapping AutoCAD geometry to MicroStation geometry wasnÝt much fun, if as it would always require translation and that meant some data was lost or compromised.

Year after year, I would attend Bentley events where users would always ask for more software interoperability among all of the vendors in the infrastructure community. And many strategies and mapping tools were delivered with varying degrees of success. It wasnÝt until MicroStation V8 that Bentley really got a grip of the DWG issue with an ingenious solution.

Bentley rarely if ever changes its file format, while Autodesk seems to update DWG every 2-3 years. For the first major change in almost 16 years, Bentley changed DGN with MicroStation V8. Amongst the reasons for the change, was to expand the architecture to better support DWG workflows.The company chose to take AutoCAD elements that were described in DWG and include them as a sub-set of the MicroStation feature set, so the software could be used in AutoCAD clone mode, where you could only create elements that AutoCAD could understand and on import MicroStation didnÝt need to translate the DWG elements as they were supported natively. So, for customers the compatibility situation drastically improved.

In terms of competition, Bentley hasnÝt been a particularly strong blip on its competitive radar, with Autodesk more concerned about Dassault Systemes and SolidWorks I the last few years. That said, Autodesk hasnÝt been complacent in keeping an eye on Bentley. When Bentley acquired technologies it has demonstrated a passion to buy developers that had products for both MicroStation and AutoCAD and so with every developer that Bentley acquired, Autodesk was quick to lock these out of its AutoCAD developer program, generating a fair amount of animosity. BentleyÝs acquisitions have been especially sharp, aiding it to own the Structural and Civil analysis markets. These are technologies that Autodesk would like to have and itÝs widely quoted that Autodesk management think that Bentley should Ùdump MicroStationÝ and become AutodeskÝs biggest third party developer!

However, when one looks at the reinvigoration of software development at Autodesk since Carl Bass took over as CEO, itÝs clear to see that Autodesk wants to play in the areas that Bentley has carved out as core niches ± namely Civil/Transport Engineering, Plant, Infrastructure and Geospatial. This ambition is backed up by AutodeskÝs recent internal development of limited DGN capability for its AutoCAD and Revit software tools. For the first time, Autodesk really feels it needs to gain access to data thatÝs held in DGN. So we have two old competitors that have a need to access each otherÝs formats. Bentley has an array of analysis, document management and vertical solutions that could benefit and Autodesk is looking to move into traditional Bentley markets with new tools and is also developing itÝs own Green building analysis tools.