Beta Testers claim “ATHENS” a success

Back again… and the Athens collaboration story continues.

In my previous blogs I told you how the Athens’ team gathered their development requirements from users, and then I outlined the core capabilities being added as a result. Today I want to share with you the feedback gained from our uses during their testing phase.

Sticking with the core capabilities we asked users to tell us “how” and “why” they benefit. And based on early feedback we appear to have exceeded expectations. Users now tell us…

1. With a comprehensive software portfolio that improves interoperability across products, teams, and projects, everyone has access to the right tools. No one has to “make do” with tools that don’t optimize workflow which leads users to predict lower project costs, higher team productivity, and shorter training cycles.
2. With V8i's intuitive conceptual and generative design modeling tools, project teams can easily move designs from concept to completion using the same software environment. For example, the new surface and push-pull modeling tools enable teams to capture innovative thinking and transition rapidly from concept to completion. In addition, the parametric and associative modeling tools allow users to iterate more easily on design alternatives and answer more questions earlier in the process. The benefit? Users will increase productivity, improve information quality, and reduce project rework.
   Better still, with the late addition of the Luxology rendering engine to MicroStation and all MicroStation-based applications users are blown away by their newfound ability to render models in near real-time. Already users are reporting an ability to improve project quality, win more business, and reduce software costs as MicroStation can now do it all.
3. Interactive dynamic views have the capability to change 3D nodel workflows forever by building on, and extending, Revit's approach to solving the problem of drawing coordination. V8i does this by actively supporting the workflows of distributed teams all working on the same project. However, V8i goes one step further than Revit by using display sets to isolate 3D geometry in the working view to help users simplify the 3D model creation process and to enable them to interactively visualize designs in new ways. This means teams can improve the quality of deliverables and reduce the time spent creating 3D models and preparing and coordinating 2D documentation.  We envisage that these improvements will shorten production times,  and improve the quality of all project deliverables.
4. Coordinating all project information from many disciplines using intrinsic geo-coordination is a big hit with project teams. It may not be as sexy as the Luxology rendering or the dynamic views, but the ability to synchronize and coordinate true and projected coordinate systems will be the reason why many projects save time coordinating data, improve information reliability, and reduce the risk of errors on site. And that IS sexy.
5. Their network bandwidth has been effectively increased by many orders of magnitude thanks to Delta File Transfer. Many are experiencing accelerated file access times through DFT which is enabling them to access larger files in less time, improve quality of collaboration, and reduce bandwidth dependency.  Furthermore, users appreciate their ability to – for the first time – check files in and out of ProjectWise via a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) portal thanks to the ProjectWise Web Parts integration. The reason? Now anyone on the project team can access any information from any source software including accounting systems, scheduling systems, CRM, project management software etc. through a single portal powered by MOSS.
6. The Interoperability Platform will prove invaluable to all project teams that need to integrate software products in order to deliver software choices & to enable project and asset information reuse throughout the project lifecycle and across all workflows. The benefits are clear to all; reduced data translation costs, reduced error count, and reduced project rework.

I have to run… I’ll dig out some specific user quotations and post them up here in due course.

Cheers

Jc

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