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Point Clouds, Apps, and More
Bentley Pointools V8i is a new software product from Bentley Systems providing preprocessing of point clouds for downstream distribution. It was recently used in a different context - a heritage project at Stonehenge in the United Kingdom - that resulted in the discovery of 71 carvings of Bronze Age axes not previously seen for more than three thousand years.
Recently, Bentley Systems announced a new release of Bentley Poìntools V8i and two new iWare apps, followed by a new release of Bentley Descartes in April. Faraz Ravi, Bentley director, product management for point-cloud technology, explains how these product offerings complement each other and discusses the Poìntools V8i release and its complementary iWare apps. Also covered are issues with navigating point clouds and a recent heritage project at the Stonehenge site in the United Kingdom.
Bentley Pointools V8i and iWare Apps
Point clouds have become both vital and pervasive in infrastructure design and management use cases. Bentley Systems has acknowledged this and created a number of product offerings that facilitate the use of point cloud files in various ways. A new, recent offering is Bentley Pointools V8/, which was released in January 2013 and is geared towards point-cloud-centric workflows. The product now includes point-cloud differencing and clash detection functionality. This makes differences and clashes easy to detect and visualize. Commenting on the release, Ravi says: "Bentley Pointools V8i is a stand-alone product that offers a very highperformance environment in which users perform editing operations, and produce communication and simulation content from the point clouds."
When asked how this product relates to Bentley's existing product offerings that involve point-cloud use (Bentley Descartes, ProjectWise Point-cloud Services,...