CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
2 May 2007
Product News
Bentley Releases Comprehensive Engineering Design Solution to Advance GIS for Electric Utilities
Bentley Systems, Incorporated released its comprehensive engineering design solution to advance GIS for electric utilities.
The solution includes Bentley Electric XM and Bentley Expert Designer XM - two new fully interoperable products built on Bentley's next-generation geospatial technology. In addition, Bentley Electric XM is delivered with a industry best practices data model for electric utilities, along with an intuitive visual modeling editor that can be used to modify and extend the model.
Bentley's solution for electric utilities supports new levels of efficiency in managing electric distribution networks throughout the plan, design, build and operate lifecycle. Enabled with configurable business workflows, the solution helps integrate mapping, facilities management, and design with work management and asset management workflows. Users can optimize designs, specify all materials and labor required to complete work requests, and have flexibility in managing labor and materials costs, all in the context of defined business processes.
Said Carey Mann, vice president Geospatial Solutions, for Bentley, "By removing the inefficiencies of disparate systems from tightly coupled business processes, Bentley's new solution represents a new paradigm for electric utilities. For the first time, facilities mapping, design engineering, and analytically driven estimating have been integrated into a single work environment."
Bentley Electric XM delivers core mapping, network documentation, facility mapping, and facility management functions. In addition, it provides feature placement, editing, and viewing, supports directional network trace and highlight, validates feature placement against configurable business rules, and enables simple service delivery.
Bentley Expert Designer XM extends Bentley Electric XM to add intelligent and optimized design and integrated estimating. It features rapid rules-based placement of facilities, provides an interactive catalog with drag and drop placement, automatically assigns compatible units (standard materials and labor), and facilitates design version and cost comparisons.
Whether graphically editing or dragging catalog items to work points, the estimate is dynamically created as each feature is placed, edited, or removed. Connectivity and structural attachments are maintained, while structural and electrical analytical capabilities support optimal pole, transformer, wire, and fuse sizing.
The Bentley Electric XM data model is extensive and supports:
• Poles, framing standards, switch cabinets, conduits, vaults and duct banks, and guys
• Conducting features in the primary and secondary network
• Maintenance inspections
• Structural analysis
• Guying, pole loading, sag and clearance, and cable pulling
• Primary distribution network
• Conductor
• Transformers, sectionalizers, and other devices
• Electrical analysis
• Local flow, motor starting, and voltage flicker
• Equipment sizing and optimization
• Secondary distribution network
• Street lighting
• Service and loads
• Load modeling and secondary wire sizing
Bentley Electric XM and Bentley Expert Designer XM are part of the increasingly comprehensive solution offered by Bentley to operators of electric utilities. With products to design, build, and operate power generation plants, substations, and transmission and distribution networks, Bentley provides a true plant-to-consumer solution.
Bentley's unique federated data management technology ensures that engineering and business documents are integrated with information stored in spatial databases such as Oracle 10g. It accomplishes this all in the context of definable workflows that support established business processes and enable collaboration among distributed participants.
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