Integrated civil platform

Dusty - Our roadmap for the future has been presented several times at various conferences and other settings and will continue to be presented as it develops.  

One of the key aspects of our plans is to preserve your investment to a high degree.  For example, the roadway designer which has been a part of Inroads for years has now become a part of Geopak starting with XM SP2.  But the criteria road design workflow is also still included.  This allows you (the user) to train and transition to the newer tools on your schedule not ours.

Another example: The V8i civil products (Geopak, Inroads, MX and PowerCivil) contain the first bits of the civil platform to which you make reference (Civil GPS, Civil Accudraw and Roundabouts) And again, you (the user) make the decision whether to start using them alongside the older tools or ignore them and train for them later.  (I hope you choose the former because the new tools are pretty nifty, but that is your choice, not mine)

In technology there is an ever-present need for educating ourselves in the latest tools and methods as we all know.  But, obviously I cannot advise you how to set up your budgets.  I offer the above examples to show that we are serious in our commitment to NOT yank the rug out from under you.

Dusty - The Bentley Institute training materials for InRoads and GEOPAK are also designed for you to maximize your training investment and migration schedule to new technology and functionality. Our core courses are based on the most important and utilized tools and workflows in current production environments. Those courses are supplemented with additional feature, task, and workflow specific OnDemand training allowing you to choose exactly when and how much training best fits your needs and schedule. For additional information about Bentley Institute training visit www.bentley.com/LearningPaths.

Robert and Dan - Thanks for your replies.  I think what Robert hit on is what I am looking for, that the new platform is in the works.  From both of your replies I have a clarifying question for both of you, but first let me explain the context of the question.  

All of the work I do is in a riverine environment.  All of the work we perform involves some type of hydraulic modeling and often design work.  Our design work consists of a varitey of bank protection components, levees, grade control, etc.  I don't desgin roads or bridges though the work I do is often related to them.  In general our design work is similar to basic earthwork, but with more complexity becuase of it being in a river.  There is no software platform out there that is tailored to what we do, so we are always taking something like InRoads and using the tools in a very non standard way.  Because of this I am always looking for better ways to do the work we do, and trying to find new tools that might better fit our workflow.  The interest in GEOPAK is primarily because of the dynamic editing of features as I think this might enhance our design process compared to what we currently do in InRoads.  

So, with InRoads and GEOPAK in mind, is the dynamic editing in GEOPAK a useful and powerful tool that would be beneficial to invest the time in to learn it (compared to similar capabilities in InRoads)?  And with regard to my last question, is this a component that would probably be in any future civil platforms?

 PS I have sent the attached letter to Bentley but never heard anything back.  Any thoughts from either of you?

 Thanks.

Hi Dusty,

 The Modeler component of GEOPAK is specifically designed to deal with "non-linear" design situations that you would encounter doing stream/river/ditch/channel redesign and restoration.

We have a number of custromers using Modeler who do that specific work...

If you'd like to contact me directly, I'd be more than happy to discuss a "typical" project with you, maybe work through a solution with you to ensure you are comfortable that this toolset will fit your requirements.