The CAD Insider

Bentley Does Point Clouds

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO - and Bentley was on hand at SPAR, the annual gathering for the 3D scanning industry, to remind attendees that its applications that have been helping with 3D scanning and point clouds for years. 

It as at SPAR Europe late in 2011 that Bentley announced it had bought PointTools for its Vortex point cloud engine. The idea was to make point clouds more usable -- which was not the case previously given the massive amount of data and file sizes of infrastructure scans.

"A point cloud file can be 50 to 60 billion points," says Ron Gant, head of marketing for Bentley's civil engineering line. "We've integrated PointTools into all Bentley applications now and can handle very large datasets."

Kurt Rasmussen, AE for Bentley, shows customer point cloud processing with Descartes.

Still, what good is a point cloud if you can't make any sense out of it? 3D laser scans produce x, y, z data that used to be displayed as white points on the screen. Get into the middle of that and it can look like outer space amidst the stars. And you are lost. It has been helpful that most scans nowadays use a camera in conjunction with the laser to capture a color value for each point. With the addition of color, the scan starts approaching what the eye would see and the universe starts looking a lot more orderly. 

But you still have points.

What CAD users need are objects. The pipe that was scanned with a laser is represented as a million points. You can't move the pipe by picking it and dragging it. You can't use it for interference checking. Enter Bentley's Descartes, which can use the points to make CAD geometry.

It's not magic. Don't expect Descartes to sort out the point cloud on its own. A skilled human operator still needs to be in the process.

Kurt Rasmussen, application engineer for Bentley, who shows me Descartes, prefers a step by step approach. He guides Descartes through a colorized point cloud model of the inside of a process plant, letting the software create a pipe here, a column there. A useful CAD model emerges piece by piece. Descartes appears quite adept at interpreting close-together points and determining them to be standard structural shapes. Its efficiency is obvious. But Daniel is there to when the points don't tell the real story. For example, when the laser doesn't record a surface from which it is reflected, or where fireproofing material throws off the shape of an I-beam. A chain link fence might confuse the software -- but not Kurt.

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For more information, see Bentley Descartes product page: http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Bentley+Descartes/

Righting the Wrong - the Costa Concordia Shipwreck

LONDON (Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2013), Oct 28, 2013 -  The cruise ship Costa Concordia, carrying twice the passengers of the the Titanic, did not have to worry about icebergs as it plied the waters of the Mediterranean in early 2012. It was a large rock that gashed the hull. It managed to get close to shore before it listed to one side and sank.  For a few months, it lay ignominiously on its side in the shallow waters off the coast of Giglio, an Italian island once known as a tourist destination. But now Giglio is famous worldwide for the biggest cruise ship wreck in history. With the captain having an illicit lover at the helm, then fleeing the scene, being rounded up to be charged for manslaughter (32 passengers perished), you couldn't get a juicier story. Also, a cruise ship capsized off shore is not good for tourist business. The whole thing was a national embarrassment. The ship had to go.

Image from Daily Mail, UK

Then conventional way to remove a ship is in parts. An army of workers swarm the ship, peeling off pieces like mad ants, hauling them off in a giant salvage operation. To do so would introduce all manner of pollutants into an area protected as a marine sanctuary. Why can't someone right the ship and sail it away?

It wasn't a new concept. Pulling a ship back upritght is known as parbuckling. But no one had had ever done this with a ship this size. This did not deter Tecon, an Italian firm specializing in offshore structures,  who not only was able to pull the Concordia upright, but proceeded to tell us about the effort at the Bentley conference. Bentley's SAC software was used to analyze the structure and the forces.

Tecon welded a structure to the side of the ship and attached cables to it. Supporting the ship on a somewhat stable bed especially made for for this operation that served as a pivot point, the cables were pulled until the ship was in the proper orientation. It took over 24 hours.

video from  Tecon site

As of the time of this writing, I'm not sure the gash has been repaired. The water still needs to be be pumped out to make it float again. The ship currently sits that way on a temporary platform. It will one day sail away as I presume it is now getting shipshape -- at least to the point at which it can limp to a suitable salvage site. 

Square Train In Round Tunnel - Sparks Fly in the Cascade Tunnel

LONDON (Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2013), Oct 28, 2013 -  Driving a train into a tunnel at full speed is an act of faith. As that little hole in the mountain approaches, you can only hope the engineers who designed the tunnel and the men who laid the tracks did their jobs well. Surely, all the other trains that have entered before yours have also emerged from the other side. Intact. Unscathed. Whole.

photo from Lewis and Clark Train Club

With the 8 mile long Cascade Tunnel, the longest tunnel in the United States, this is not necessarily the case. Built in 1928 before the advent of double stack container cars, corners of trains had been scraping the insides of the tunnel. The tunnel was notched to prevent this problem. It wasn't enough. The double stacked container cars were creating showers of sparks as they plowed their own, even deeper channels.

The obvious solution was to increase the depth of the notches. Makes sense, right? The tunnel owners (BSNF) balked at the $10 million cost to deepen the notch along the entire 8 mile length and hired JL Patterson & Associates, Inc. to suggest an alternative solution. Engineers at JLP lowered their gaze from the damaged roof of the tunnel to the track. Could the placement of the track, perhaps its shift over time, be causing the scraping? 

To prove their theory, JLP needed some serious technology. First, they would have to remap the tunnel. With the tunnel being under thousands of feet of rock, GPS wasn't going to help inside. They had to create a survey network throughout the tunnel length, anchored by GPS-verified locations on each end. Then they set to work constructing a 3D model of the rail and the tunnel.

A 3D laser scanner was driven through the tunnel and generated a point cloud model of the tunnel. The good news was the scanner generated 2.5 terabytes of data. That was also the bad news, jokes the JLP engineer who is presenting the project as finalist at Bentley's annual parade of top projects. Point clouds need to be converted to surface models in order to make themselves useful -- visually or for analysis. And also, the traveling scanner would need to be aware of its own position. Knowing its position and relating that to the dimensions of a double stacked container car should allow them to define a clearance between train and tunnel-- or lack thereof.

Who can help with that? Enter Bentley Systems. Bentley's Rail and Transit software seems tailor made for such an application. 

Bentley has software specifically for railroad design. From another Bentley project.

Bottom Line

JLP credits Bentley Rail and Track to help have saved BSNF save $9M of the projected $10M cost estimated for the original plan, a whopping 90% cost reduction. 

 

Crystal Sustainability Exhibit in London

LONDON (Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2013), Oct 28, 2013 - After a round of press announcements and industry updates, the media, Bentley employees and customers, were loaded onto double decker buses to visit the Crystal, a Siemens' funded futuristic building near the Thames River. The Crystal is billed as the world's largest exhibit devoted to urban sustainability. Siemens is betting that, despite its technological bent, it will become a tourist atttaction. 

Sustainable buildings on display at London's Crystal, which is bills itself as the world's largest urban sustainability exhibit.

I wasn't sure of the connection between Bentley and Siemens. Most CAD insiders know of Siemens PLM as a CAD company. There had been talk of Siemens (the parent company) being a Bentley customer on some building project.

The exhibits and videos were about technology as an answer to the world's social problems, such as over population and increasing urbanization. By 2050, 70% of the world's population will be in cities.  A third of them could end up in slums. 

The Crystal seems to offer technology as an answer. We can make more sustainable cars, cleaner energy. Siemens and Bentley can both help make greener buildings with their technologies. I guess with each car, building, power plant and city using less energy and material, we can make our dwindling resources last longer.

Social solutions such as population control and curbing demand for energy and materials are not addressed.

Death Along the Hudson

TROY, NY, Mar 28 - 2012 - Covering a conference leaves little time for exercise, much less sightseeing. So I often combine the two: sightseeing while running. And on this Saturday (really, who has the nerve to schedule a full day of conference on the weekend!) I make time by getting up early. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "you can rest when you are dead."

I imagine running along the lush Hudson River valley, as the sun rises over the river, farmers markets, verdant hills, small towns with quaint bakeries, coffee shops. I need some inspiration because at 5:20AM, it's quite dark and cold.

The streets are understandably deserted. I run downhill on Hoosick Avenue until it hits the river and turn left towards South Troy and look for a running path. Isn't there a law that your city has to have a multi-use path and a pretty park if it has a waterfront? I see nothing of the sort. I settle for a sidewalks so rough and uneven that they seemto have heaved and crashed.

Speed is suffering as I pick my way around broken beer bottles. Throwing empties out of the car on Friday nights must be a local custom. Wait. Don't make snap judgments. Troy can't be all bad. It can't all be broken down, with everyone drinking and no one recycling. Maybe the next mile. So many auto parts stores. At least there cars are in good shape. 

It's starting to get light. I see the cherry trees were in bloom. The few people that were out wished me good morning.

But every block brings more boarded up shops and business and houses in disrepair. A few convenience stores are open, their signs advertising lottery tickets shine like beacons in the emerging light. By the time I cross the Hudson into Waterford, I've sunk into depressing thoughts about dying small towns and cities, a malaise that has taken over, starting from my bike ride across the country, seeing boarded up America main streets in town after town. That was years ago. Before the recession. What hope is there now?

I manage to to eke out 11 miles, clean up. I am only too happy to be bussed to Rensaeller Polytechnic Institute. Its exquisitely manicured campus, the ethereal $30 million EMPAC center, the whimsical structures from imaginative minds that will never grace the local waterfront, conversations of rich kids from better off places...all of it helps to fade the images of what lurks out there.

Can we all stay here forever?  

Glass Industry Gone But Glass Museum Looks Nice

TROY, NY (SmartGeometry 2012), Mar 24 - 2012 - Like so many of our Midwest cities, Toledo, Ohio, was once a manufacturing center. It used to be called the Glass Capital of the World, according to the city's official site. Toledo wanted to pay homage to that industry and build an addition to its Museum of Art. There was only one problem: most of that industry had gone away. Its factories shuttered, its workers laid off. Undeterred, the city of Toledo went to China -- the country responsible for so undercutting and usurping so much American industries -- to create the glass panels. If there was any shame in having lost to the world's labor bully and then have to suck up to them, it must certainly have been overcome. The $30 million dollar Glass Pavilion opened in 2006. 

photo from http://www.archdaily.com

I'm hearing all about this from Kiel Moe, Asst. Professor of Architectural Technology at Harvard. He has included the Glass Pavillion in his book, Integrated Design in Contemporary Architecture. Professor Moe tells us that Toledo even imported the engineering, as the glass panels were manufactured in Germany. We see the tortuous route the glass took as it circumnavigated the globe. If you have ever broken a plate transporting it from the sink to the dishwasher, you must marvel at the journey of the Toledo glass.

I'm sure the laid off factory workers and engineers in and around Toledo will have lots of time to visit the Toledo Museum's beautiful Glass Pavilion. 

 

SmartGeometry 2012 - The Pig's Head

TROY, NY, Mar 24 - 2012 -The conference was supposed to be about the use of parametric shaped geometry -- but the lasting image may be of a pig's head. Severed, bloody, stuffed in plastic. It was supposed to be appropriate for what it was resting on, a artsy butchers block, Zoe Coombes, founder of Cmmnwlth Studio, knows how to get attention. We were stunned into silence. Only much later at dinner, one of us deemed it vaguely pornographic, someone objected to her use of "orgasm," another deplored her use of Autodesk Mudbox... but all of us remembered her. Zoe went on to discuss the return to basics she is seeing among the city folk (her furniture studio is in New York city), was on the verge of condeming plastics, and so on.

Photo courtesy of Cmmnwlth Studio

Only when my brain was able to release the image did I realize Zoe was here because some of her designs, such as the butcher block, rely on complex shapes as can be created by tools used by generative component practioners, like Rhino. The Smart Geometry conference is like that: a variety of topics, sometimes dead relevant to its name, other times not, but often arousing. Right now I am listening to a painter and simultaneously seeing a clip of Robin Williams with a butterfly. Hmm.... that connection is not immediately apparent. But I did appreciate the bamboo bicycle (presentation about material science, materials being the theme of this years conference).

Image from  http://kennyviese.com/

Why bamboo for a bike? According to Dr Hull, head of the material science at Rensaeller Polytechnic Institute (host of SG20112), bamboo can absorb the shock and vibration better than conventional material (metal, carbon fiber) which can totally beat up bike racers, for example those who race the cobblestones of the famed Spring Classic, Paris-Roubaix.

SmartGeometry: What Exactly is It?

After seeing wondrous projects at Smart Geometry 2011 in Copenhagen, I wanted to know more about how GenerativeComponents worked so I tracked down Huw Roberts, Bentley’s Global Marketing Director, to answer a few questions. As you might guess from Huw’s title, GenerativeComponents is just a small piece of Huw’s world “but an important one.”  

Bentley's Huw Roberts champions GenerativeComponents in annual conference in Copenhagen

Even after the conference was over, I had trouble categorizing GenerativeComponents. Was it a technology? A module? An application? A programming language? A development kit? What?

It’s an application, says Huw. It’s also an environment. Luckily, he was able to explain.

“You can elect to work with GenerativeComponents is three ways. One is in a graphical environment, with models. Like a CAD program. Or you can work with just the script. GenerativeComponents also generates a graph or flow chart, which is the third way. Each can drive the other. A change in the model will change the flow chart. You can drive the model by changing the script.”

Changing the script to change the model somewhat similar to parametric modeling.  Any comparison between GenerativeComponents and parametric modelers, such as Revit?

“Oh, it’s so much more, “says Huw. Sure programs like Revit have rules and constraints, but GenerativeComponents scripting is far more versatile. “For example, try to put a window in a roof in Revit and call it a skylight. Good luck.”  GenerativeComponents allow you to be much freer in your design, more creative. Certainly those sorts of applications are great for floor plans, basic layouts, BIM, but with GenerativeComponents you can do things like size your windows to the results of a thermal analysis.

GenerativeComponents is offered free to one and all. You don’t even have to be a Bentley subscriber. What’s in it for Bentley? Why would a for-profit company be so generous, not only in the distribution of the software, but also sponsoring annual conferences, schools, etc.?

“We feel that getting GenerativeComponents out to a wide audience will result in a better technology,” says Huw. “Of course, Bentley does benefit in using the technology in its applications.”

I have to ask about Grasshopper, very much in evidence at the GenerativeComponents conference, even though it appears to compete with GenerativeComponents. “A lot of people do use Grasshopper,” concedes Huw. “It is also free.  However, it only works with Rhino, which you have to buy. Also, many Grasshopper users will find limits and then use GenerativeComponents. They find it more robust and it works better with professional applications.” So GenerativeComponents is positioned more as industrial strength solution that users graduate to? “You could say that,” says Huw.

Bentley’s largesse is also apparent in their decision to make GenerativeComponents stand alone, allowing it to work with not only Bentley apps, but Autodesk apps by virtue of DWG output. 

For more information and to download GenerativeComponents, go to www.generativecomponents.com.

 

Out of Thick Air - Water from Fog

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (Bentley Be Inspired Conference) - If you've heard of Namibia, you may be into diamonds. South Africa's neighbor to the north, Namibia, is a great source of gem quality diamonds. They say once you could walk along Namibia's beautiful beaches and find diamonds washed up by the waves. Though such finds may now be just legend, Namibia is fortunate to have not just great beaches, but access to Africa's big game for picture safaris and is blessed with great weather and relatively mild temperatures. Judging from an inflight magazine over Africa recently, a tourist trade has already developed. Not only is it a favored destination with the well off in South Africa but may be catching on with globe trotters.

But the very condition favored by tourists (sunny skies, hotel pools, scenic dunes) run counter to the needs of the local population. Namibia is home to the Kalahari Desert, the second largest desert in Africa. Though sparsely populated, Namibia strains to meet its water needs, often competing for surface water with neighboring countries.

(courtesy Atlas Industries)

Matt Parkes of Atlas Industries has a creative solution: extracting water from the coastal fog, which can be counted on to roll in every morning for the vast majority of the year. The fog yields a remarkable amount of water, which ordinarily does nothing but condense on natural plants and the coastal range.

Research in Peru and other foggy locales indicates a fine nylon net of 1 square meter is capable of extracting 3 litres every day. Add electricity and the yield is 6X as much. Of course electricity must be bought or created, but Atlas has the answer: why not use Namibia's abundant solar energy. Atlas pictures a string of fog catchers along the coast, along with an "edutainment" center to foster awareness among tourists and locals regarding the unique water resources existing in deserts. 

Inspiration for such an idea came from the humble Namib desert beetle (see Wikipedia link). The little fella stands on its head in the fog and manages to extract 37% of its body weight daily in water. The fog catcher design employs the beetle's hard shell/soft body parts biomimicry in the internal design of its fog catcher apparatus.

Another example in my neck of the woods (no pun intended) are the redwood forests north of San Francisco. Not only is the redwood fog catching ability good enough to create the tallest living creatures on earth in an area that sees no rainfall all summer, but often results in precipitation under the branches no different from rain. Quite a treat after biking up Mt Tam, I must say.

Fog on Mt Tamalpais, in California's Marin County, may have resulted in this redwood grove.

 

Bentley Annual Meeting - Small but Busy

CHARLOTTE, NC, October 13, 2009 - Bentley is piling it on. Eight press releases. It's 7AM. The coffee hasn't even kicked in. Some of us press are grumbling and I hear "I don't do morning."

So kicked off is Bentley's annual user meeting. It is substantially downsized from previous years. This year it is "invitation only." Users consist mostly of creators of exemplary projects, the kind that fill up Bentley's annual tome, The Year in Infrastructure. The awards will be presented during a dinner ceremony, an event retained from previous years and serving as focus of this year. Gone, however, is the popular conference aspect as classes have all gone online. 

Also present are 35 of the press, though not were able to get up so early. We're asked to stand up during the keynote.

A slimmed down Greg Bentley addresses a slimmed down annual meeting.But there's no shortage of information -- 8 announcements already.

A shame it couldn't be bigger. Bentley has so much to tell. It is the company's 25th anniversary. The company did the right thing by cutting back but a couple of thousand users would have made it a heck of  a party. Maybe next year. The event returns to Philadelphia next year (May 17-21, 2010).

I better scramble. Gotta process the press releases. 25 year anniversary, country licensing, 3 acquisitions. Damn, no graphics--I'll have to hunt some down.