Is it likely that gINT will release a version update to allow imports of dwg's instead of dxf R12?
The file sizes for dxf's for the projects i'm running are making gINT unusable with my computer crashing frequently at the point of dxf import.
It seems that R12 dxf's are very antiquated file format and the use of dwg's or similar would be more a user-friendly solution.
I must agree. I'm running a dual Xeon (16 cores), 16GB Ram workstation, and even with that amount of processing power I can only import DXFs of about 100 - 150 MB before gINT either freezes or dies. It doesn't take a hugely complicated CAD file to generate a 150 MB DXF file :-( Not too sure if DWG would be the format that gINT would choose as they are owned by Bentley, who make Microstation (DGN format) :-)
I can't understand why the software is still limited to dxf V12. I would have thought that it would have been a priority to enhance the drawing capabilities to bring it into line with other Bentley products. Is there a time frame for this to be implemented? For that matter is there a timeframe/roadmap for any enhancements? Also how do we propose new features. Should we use a thread on this forum and use the "Like" facility to vote for them?
With respect, the response doesn't answer the question. It talks about export of data, not import of drawings.
Bentley is currently focused on enhancing gINT drawing capabilities, primarily DGN, that would include both import and export. In this regard our consideration is that a user would be able open or attach a DGN file, rather than importing it, and Save or Save As file in DGN rather then exporting it. If gINT is migrated onto native Bentley's CAD engine it could be possible that all above is applicable to DWG files as well, for both open/attach and Save/As (rather than import/export). In essence gINT would in that scenario be directly editing CAD files in their native format. As a bonus, this could address DXF files although this is not our immediate concern.
From Bentley's perspective it would help us greatly if you would give us your opinion and input on how beneficial this would be for you - having gINT on Bentley's CAD engine, directly handling DGN and all other formats available in MicroStation.
For us, the problem at the moment is Sitemap. Sitemaps are typically created by importing a DXF, which has been created by converting, say, a topographic survey file (originally in DGN or DWG). Adding the sitemap with a large number of entities can create prohibitively large project files and in some cases a large amount of processing of the DWG/DGN needs to be undertaken to try and strip out less critical details from the plan (to reduce the number of entities) before it is converted and imported. Any workflow that interacts with a sitemap that has a large number of entities (such as selecting points from the sitemap in Output) becomes painfully slow.
With your above comment, will the Sitemap actually become an external .dgn file that is referenced by the gINT project? Will that speed up the time it takes to display and navigate the sitemap on screen?
I would just like to emphasize first that from Bentley side we are talking about what is under consideration, which means, it is not about what will certainly happen but about what could happen. As always user's input is often critical for turning Could Happen into Will Happen.
Site Map and Fence Diagram (also known as a Profile in civil world) are most common things users would like to see in native CAD environment. If gINT is migrated onto Bentley's CAD engine than users would get benefit from it by having standard CAD features available from within gINT. These features should include, in that case, that .dgn file (and possible .dwg file) could be referenced by gINT project, rather than imported. Site Map in civil engineering project is commonly a very generic plan that all stakeholders have something to add. In a complex project many disciplines would be contributing to the Site Map such as geotech, environmental, rail/road designers, land developers, utility folks, landscape architects and so on. Therefore being able to attach Site Map to gINT project (but edit it as well directly in gINT) could have benefit of seeing updates in gINT Site Map as they are being applied by any or all stakeholders, rather than constantly importing DXF file for a Site Map which is very iterative in nature and constantly requires re-importing of the newly updated Site Map. Of course in the scenario of gINT sitting on CAD engine, navigating the Site Map in terms of smoothness, speed and tools available would match those of CAD engine. We would be also talking about native layer/level management and some other standard CAD features. Anyway that is the idea behind consideration of migrating gINT onto Bentley's CAD engine, and users feedback is always more than welcome on the subject.
This would be hugely beneficial to us for certain. As I said in my earlier post, I have on many occasions had to spend ages stripping out unwanted stuff from the original CAD file so the resultant DXF has few enough objects / entities to enable import. I've had a 6 MB DWG mushroom to 145MB DXF, and this usually crashes gINT on import.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing particularly wrong with gINTs CAD engine as it stands (apart from the lack of zooming with the mouse wheel whilst having entities selected) It's mainly the handling of large DXFs which lets it down.
I would say that without DWG format support, things won't be much better. Every company that we deal / exchange drawings with (bar one) uses Autocad (sorry to swear on a Bentley forum) So without DWG support for any improved CAD engine, you're going to be excluding probably about 3/4 of the CAD producing world..... Not helpful!
Another thing to consider would be that gINT will run on the lowest spec PCs and Laptops. If the new CAD engine is going to be too resource hungry, this will no longer be the case, forcing users to upgrade hardware. Probably not too much of a problem for a large company / group, but could put a lot of smaller companies off. we'd have to upgrade 8 PCs / Laptops, all in one go, thats approx £5000... a lot of money. (It's actually not a problem for us because I do all the CAD / Sitemap work in gINT and I have a PC more than capable of the work.
Taking the above into consideration, a new CAD engine would be most welcome. If you really wanted to do something worthwhile, and get on my christmas card list for life, add a new CAD engine and port gINT to 64bit in one fell swoop. Now that would be nice..... :-)
Miles
Strah, thanks for the feedback.
The bottom line is that any "real" CAD offering, even one that only accepts dxf 12 will be better than the current Sitemap functionality, which is past it's sell-by date. However there is some extremely useful stuff in sitemaps that helps plan and visualise the data. What I would not like to see is Sitemap replaced with vanilla CAD. It should include items such as being able to plot data markers from the data, create/copy multiple points with auto-increment, goto point ID, create zones, be able to explore the data from the data markers etc.
I wonder if a GIS (like) environment rather than CAD would make more sense to replace Sitemap? That would allow visualisation of other layers such as geology, mining hazards, environmental info etc. A lot of this data is becoming available as free web services, so it would be a shame (silly) not to leverage it.
I think it would be useful to draw up a list of requirements for what the interface should do? I'd be happy to provide input.
One of the main criteria is that it shouldn't be necessary to buy a another product!
Any time frame for delivery?
Thank Tony,
All user feedback are very important for us.
Marc-Andre
There are multiple good points raised in the posts above and I will try to address them all.
Let me first introduce a Bentley-specific notion called PowerPlatform, often mentioned in discussions with Bentley users.
>>PowerPlatform is a build system that produces the set of files common across MicroStation, its derivatives (Bentley View, MicroStation PowerDraft and ProjectWise Navigator), and a number of Bentley Practioner products. All products built using the PowerPlatform are collectively called as the "PowerPlatform based Products"<<.
In simpler words PowerPlatform could be viewed as Bentley’s CAD engine that many Bentley’s products are built on top of, and taking advantage of its powerful CAD features. PowerPlatform based products can expose variety of CAD features from very few to great many in a product that is built on the top of it. One of PowerPlatform derivatives is MicroStation PowerDraft which, I believe, is sort of equivalent to AutoCAD LT, which further I believe is what was referred to as vanilla CAD in one of the posts above. See these links for more on PowerDraft:
• http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/MicroStation+PowerDraft/
• http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/MicroStation+PowerDraft/Comprehensive+Breadth+and+Depth.htm
And this is indeed what could be considered – a gINT built on the top of PowerPlatform taking advantage of its “real” CAD (as stated in the post above) and reducing CAD features to the one of “vanilla” CAD so it does not overwhelm gINT users, but rather enhance their CAD experience.
Related to it, and worth noting is that on July 8, 2008 Bentley and Autodesk 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, to improve the ability to read and write the companies’ respective DWG and DGN formats in mixed environments with greater fidelity. In plain English that means that PowerPlatform products can read/write and edit directly DWG files (and vice versa – AutoCAD can handle DGN). That would take care of the DWG format support mentioned in one of the posts above. This announcement was posted both on
Bentley site: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Corporate/News/Interoperability+Agreement/
as well as on
Autodesk site: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11680608&linkID=14271589
And as it was brought up in one of the posts above, GIS functionality in Site Map would add a great value to it. Good news is that PowerPlatform could take care of it too. PowerPlatform aggregates CAD and GIS functionality. See exciting GIS functionality offered in MicroStation PowerDraft (a PowerPlatform derivative), some of which are geospatial referencing, simultaneous coordinate systems, Geospatial PDFs, Google Earth, OGC Web Map Server support, and Real-time GPS devices:
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/MicroStation+PowerDraft/Comprehensive+Breadth+and+Depth.htm
Related to one of the posts above, I would not know of the top of my head how much resources PowerPlatform based gINT would consume, but I think that a reasonable estimate is that the lowest specs for PCs and Laptops (tablets too?) would be those required for vanilla CAD type machine. As a rule of thumb check MicroStation PowerDraft (or AutoCAD LT) specs. However if an option of PowerPlatform based gINT running in the cloud existed then specs of any tablet would be sufficient.
Also, addressing one of the posts above, a time frame for delivery would not be a date, but rather a process. I hope most of us understand that this would be a fairly large mission, but I hope most of us also see it as one that would be worth undertaking and not impossible. So in such case we would be talking about transition, and one of the approaches being considered could be first complementing current gINT with PowerPlatform based gINT and then maybe eventually replacing it. This would take multiple releases to achieve it. It would start simple, and each release of PowerPlatform based gINT would be growing in functionality until being capable to replace current gINT.
If we started now, we could have a first PowerPlatform based gINT released perhaps Q1 or Q2 of 2015. So if we decided to go that route and if you are interested in providing a list of requirements for what the interface should do, or being early adopter or beta tester, please contact me directly.
Strah,
Thanks for the information. It's really helpful to have visibility of future developments.
I hope the new CAD interface is tablet / touch screen friendly, so users can pan and zoom using finger motions.
Phil WadeDatgelBentley Channel Partner and Developer PartnerE: phil.wade@datgel.com | T: +61 2 8202 8600 & +65 6631 9780
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