I am the computer tech that was in charge of the migration of Microstation from v8.5 to v8.11.09... (v8i) on XP. This included for the building dept., the use of Aecosim. Since on XP it didn't work with OfficeXP/Excel2002, we prepared a machine on Windows 7, Office/Excel 2010. Due to a momentary shortage in licenses, I considered installing OpenOffice instead. Turned out, it HAD to be Excel. (2010+)
The migration towards Win7/Off2010 is now going ahead, but there might be in the future a situation (budget, OS change, ...) where we have to consider an alternative.
Did anybody ever try using an alternative to MS OFFICE ? If yes, wich one, and how ?
Unfortunatly Excel seems to be required for some things, and it won't work with LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Some things depend on vba-macros, which I think is a problem for Bentley as well as Microsoft changes things with each Office version and one never knows which version is ok and which not.
Andreas is correct, at this time Microsoft Office (vs. Office alternatives) is a requirement, specifically Excel for typical ABD usage. Office 2010 is supported, though future versions should support Office 2013 (365) as well.
First step in the right direction however would be to go over to a more neutral document format. After what I have heard Office 2013 should be capable of doing that, working with Open Document Formats. From there the step to use different office suites is easy.
www.theregister.co.uk/.../uk_picks_open_document_format_for_all_government_files
I agree with Andreas
regards / Thomas Voghera