Users may start with Scenario Services in two ways;

1. By directly typing the Scenario Services URL, or

2. By first Logging in to CONNECT portal, selecting a project and then clicking on Scenario Services icon from the bottom of that page.

Scenario Services Landing page:

When the user directly types the Scenario Services URL, a “landing page” is shown. This page shows an overview of Bentley Scenario Services (Technology Preview) along with various features as well as featured applications such as STAAD.Pro, SACS Wind Turbine Analysis and AutoPipe Support Optimization.

The Overview section shows various information about Scenario Services in general and describes specific solution types. The topics in the right side of the Overview section have a rotating selector that changes selection every 15 seconds. As the selection changes, corresponding description shows up on the main panel. If the user clicks on one of the topics, the rotation stops allowing the user to read the topic description.

What’s New section shows the latest feature that has been added to Scenario Services in chronologically reverse order.

Clicking on More button on Featured Applications panel shall open up a window describing specific use of Scenario Services for these disciplines.

Clicking on the Close (X) icon at the top right of the detail panel closes the panel.

Users need to click on the Sign up for Technology Preview button for using the Scenario Services site. Clicking on this button redirects users to Bentley CONNECT portal page for logging in.

When User clicks on the button, Sign up for Technology Preview, a notification appears informing the user that he will be redirected to CONNECT site for logging in. The user then needs to select a project (or create one) and click on Scenario Services icon from the bottom of the page to return to Scenario Services.

As the user confirms redirection by clicking on the Continue button, the user is redirected to CONNECT portal site, which asks the user to sign in using Bentley credentials (IMS credentials).

Signing in and Selecting project in CONNECT portal:

After a successful login, user is redirected to the CONNECTION Center. (Note that this is not a part of Scenario Services).

The user must select an existing CONNECT project or create a new CONNECT project. Once the project is selected, a tile appears at the bottom of the page (ProjectWise Scenario Services Technology Preview). User should click on this tile to return to Scenario Services.

Description of CONNECT Portal page or the process of creating a Project is not part of Scenario Services. However, relevant parts of these screens are shown below with brief description.

The following section describes how to select an existing project or create a new CONNECT project.

A set of projects the user have used in recent past will appear in the above list. User may select one of these projects by clicking on it or click on More to view other projects created under the same organization. Note that all users of an organization have access to the projects created under the organization but users cannot access projects across organizations.

To create a new project, user may click on Register a Project from the Projects page (shown above) or click on New from the Personal portal.

Once the Project is selected, ProjectWise Scenario Services (Technology Preview) panel should appear near the bottom of the screen.

From the Services List at the bottom of the image above, the user needs to click on the ProjectWise Scenario Services (Technology Preview) link to return to the Scenario Services Home Page.

Scenario Services Home Page:

The Home page of Scenario Services provides an overview about the site, details of Featured applications and a link for the Solution Dashboard page. Note that the content of the Home page is essentially the same as the Landing page, except that it shows a button to view the Solution Dashboard instead of Sign Up button.

Technology Preview only a limited set of Bentley users have access to the Scenario Services site. If an unauthorized user lands on this page and clicks on the Solution Dashboard button, a message will be shown on the Dashboard Recent tab saying;

Sorry, you are not authorized to use this service. To request access, please contact support@bentley.com and ask your request to be forwarded to Bentley Scenario Services team.

Scenario Service User Settings:

When a user clicks on the User Settings icon, the User Settings for Scenario Services appears with the following information;

• Engineering Convention: Default Engineering convention to be while creating a Solution.

• Communication language: Language in which the pages will be displayed. Note that irrespective of User’s own language setting, Scenario Services will only display the languages currently available. The user needs to select from one of these languages. EN (English) is default language for all users.

• PWSS Role: Role of the User in Scenario Services. This is reserved for later use when Administrative user will be able to perform certain functions which will not be available for regular users.

User can click on the Edit Settings icon  to change the Engineering Convention and Communication Language dropdowns.

After saving the profile user must click Home to return to Scenario Services Home page.

Scenario Services Solution Dashboard (Recent Solution Tab):

The Solution Dashboard page is shown below. This page contains three tabs, of which the Recent solution tab is shown by default.

The dashboard displays last six solutions used by the user as well as a all solutions “pinned” by the user with following details:

• Name of the solution.

• Type of the solution (e.g. Optioneering, QA, or Optimization) denoted by icon

• Percentage completion of an active solution using a Pie chart. The Pie shows Completed scenarios in Green, Pending scenarios in white, Processing scenarios in blue, Failed scenarios in Red and Cancelled scenarios in Orange. User can view the number of scenarios with their state on mouse hover upon the pie chart.

• Number of scenarios being processed

• Number of scenarios completed

• Number of scenarios failed

• Total number of scenarios associated with the solution

• Number of Users who have access to this solution

• Number of Notifications received

By clicking on any solution, user can navigate to the solution details page.

If the user adds a scenario or otherwise alter configuration of a job or task, performs a design or creates an output, the corresponding solution is considered “Recent” for that user.

• Other functionalities on the Solution page:

• "Create new solution": This button allows user to create a new solution.

Pinned solutions: Users may designate any Solution as “Pinned”. There is no restriction on the number of Pinned Solutions. These solutions also appear on the first page along with the most recent solutions (max 6) accessed by the user. Solutions can also be unpinned from the panel as required.

Active Solution Tab:

Active tab displays Solutions that are Active for the for the user’s organization. The list contains solutions under the current project as well as other projects. User may select the check box “Only show solutions under currently selected project” to filter the list to solutions under the current project.

When no recent solution exists for a project, a message displays asking the user to create a new solution.

Initially the first 100 solutions are displayed. As the user scrolls down more solutions are dynamically added to the display (100 solutions at a time).

Active Solution table displays the following details:

• Name of the active solution. User may click on the name to view Scenario dashboard containing details of this solution.

• Description of the solution.

• Connect Project Name.

• Name of the user who last modified the solution. If not modified, shows the username who created it.

• Date and time of last modification. If not modified, it shows the time it was created. Note that the date and time are displayed according to the time zone specified in users’ CONNECT profile. Internally the date and time are stored in GMT.

• Solution Type

• Template selected.

 Archived solution tab:

This tab is used to display all archived solutions for the selected CONNECTed Project. User can navigate to this page by clicking on the Archived tab in Home page.

• Archived Solutions tab displays the same columns as in Active Solutions tab.

• Any Archived solution can be selected from the list and moved to Active list by clicking on “Restore solution” icon. Note that only one archived solution can be activated at a time. If no archived Solution is checked or more than one archived Solution is checked, the following message appears: Please select only one solution.

Creating a Solution:

Creating a Solution is the starting point of performing any cloud-based computation in Scenario Services. Currently Scenario Services only offers Optioneering Solution, which allows users to manually optimize an engineering design by running a set of alternatives or Scenarios and comparing them using a set of performance indicators.

QA Solution and Optimization Solution have been conceived but not fully designed as of Dec 2015. Therefore, discussions on these are left out for now. Note that there may be many more types of Solutions available in future.

Solutions are always created under the currently selected CONNECT project.

Users need navigate through a succession of pages for creating a Solution. At any point user may click on previous button to go back to the previous page.

Define Solution:

CONNECT Project: Shows the following information about current CONNECTed Project:

Project ID, Description, Project Number, Last Modification Date, Location, Longitude. Note that these information simply comes from CONNECT profile and the user may not change anything here.

Solution: Users need to specify the following to create a Solution.

• Solution Name, unique for a project. (Limit: 128 characters)
• Solution Description: Optional description of the solution. (Limit: 512 characters)

Engineering Convention: Available conventions such as Structural-US, Structural-Metric etc. Default is taken from the Engineering Convention stored in the User settings.

Solution Type: Select Solution type. At this point (Dec 2015) only Optioneering Solutions are available.

If the user enters a Solution name that already exists in the project, or enters a name or description that is too large, the offending edit box is highlighted in red border and the user is not allowed to proceed without fixing the error. Hovering over the erroneous edit box shows the error message.

Select Engineering Discipline:

Engineering Discipline refers to a specific type of Engineering analysis and/or design. The users will typically deal with a single Engineering Discipline – such as Structural, Offshore, Energy, etc. However, it is possible to run and optimize models across multiple Engineering Disciplines – such as a large building that needs to be optimized for Structural, Energy and Acoustics.

User may not proceed without selecting the Engineering Discipline. An error is displayed if no Engineering Discipline is selected.

Select App Version and template:

users need to first select Application and Version. Then click  button to search available Templates. Once the Template is selected, list of available Template Versions appears and the user must select one of these to proceed to the next stage.

Note that after selecting an Application Version and perhaps a Solution Template if the user goes back and selects another Application Version, Search Template button must be pressed again to find Templates containing the selected version of the Application.

Select Cluster type:

User must select the default cluster type to run Scenarios. Typically, if a Solution has, say 30 Scenarios, a Medium cluster (with 32 nodes) should be selected and all the Scenarios should be run in parallel.

Select Indicators and Files:

Optioneering Solutions are mainly used to compare performance of various Scenarios. The comparison is done using pre-defined Performance Indicators. Users need to select the Performance Indicators that will be used to compare Scenarios.

Performance Indicators: Performance Indicators are used to evaluate the overall performance of an engineering model. For example, in a tall building, the Story deflection will be one Indicator. The engineer will try to minimize the story deflection. Utilization Index may be another Indicator. The engineer will try to maximize the utilization of material used. A group of such Indicators need to be evaluated to arrive at the most optimal design. User may use Select All to select all the indicators in one shot.

Detailed Input/Output Data: Detailed Data harvested from application outputs, typically used in QA solutions to compare results between two application versions. These have no use for Optioneering solution for now.

App Output Files: Users should specify the output files produced by the application that need to be stored and downloaded later on demand.

If the user does not select any Performance Indicator and/or App Output File, relevant warning or error messages are shown. Note that user must select at least one Performance Indicator or one App Output File to create the Solution. (Otherwise there is no point running the Scenario as no result will be available for use.)