Bentley Systems Announces the Release of iModel 2.0 and iModelHub Cloud Service

It’s the second public day of the Year in Infrastructure 2017 Conference here in Singapore, and Bentley Systems has made an announcement for ProjectWise Design Integration service users.

First up, is the reveal of iModel 2.0,which is a next-generation cloud platform for digital workflows in infrastructure projects. The second announcement is focused on the iModelHub cloud service, which is a change management and notification service. iModelHub logs all project changes on a timeline, and then notifies project participants based on their ProjectWise workflow configuration.

iModel 2.0

Building and improving on the first iteration of iModel, the latest version, iModel 2.0, focuses on improving accessibility, accountability and alignment.

Improved accessibility means that users can access the database at any time, without affecting other users, and it achieves this by replicating the database wherever it is needed. Copies are synchronized when necessary through the iModelHub service.

Accountability is enhanced in the new version, and this means that the causes and effects of changes to documents can be tracked and monitored via the iModelHub.

Improved alignment is achieved via iModelHub as well, and helps ensure that the maximum possible digital alignment is possible across all iModels.

iModelHub

iModelHub is a cloud service that runs alongside ProjectWise and the iModel Services and allows tasks to be synchronized and viewed on mobile devices (see Figure 1 for an overview of how iModelHub integrates within the iModel 2.0 platform architecture).

iModelHub maintains a “timeline of changes” that provides an accountable record of who did what, and when. Any version of iModel can be accessed, and significant versions can be named. Visual and textual reports can show the difference between any two points on the timeline.

“With our iModel 2.0 cloud platform, I foresee an accelerating ecosystem of innovation for true digital workflows around infrastructure assets,” said Keith Bentley, chief technology officer and cofounder of Bentley Systems.

“To get there, our first priority has been to make possible substantial improvements in infrastructure project delivery and asset performance outcomes, without needing to change current BIM workflows,” Bentley continued. “The best news is that ProjectWise Design Integration users can set up their iModel Bridges to connect to iModelHub without retraining users or changing their existing applications or work processes—and without introducing any risk to their projects. If nothing else, the value of change-based visualization through Navigator Web will prove so indispensable, I predict most organizations will never want to do another project without it.”