Bentley acquires Pointools
Will incorporate Vortex point cloud engine into company-wide platform
by Sam Pfeifle
|
November 08, 2011
AMSTERDAM and THE HAGUE, the Netherlands – Bentley Systems
used its annual Be Inspired event and SPAR Europe to announce it has acquired
point cloud engine maker Pointools for an undisclosed sum. Bentley already hada technology partnership with Pointools, incorporating its Vortex engine for
managing point clouds into its MicroStation platform, but Bentley CEO Greg
Bentley said, “to extend the usefulness of point clouds through the
infrastructure life cycle, we needed a data management strategy, and that
involves more than file management … In order to accomplish that, we needed to
merge our code streams with those of Pointools.”
That was only going to happen with an acquisition.
Pointools, for the time being, will continue to operate
“business as usual,” said Pointools VP Joe Croser. The software company’s
vendor neutral approach will continue, as will its plug-in capabilities with
companies that compete with Bentley, like Autodesk.
However, the integration with Bentley products is now deep
and widespread, making point clouds much more accessible. Bentley can now offer
point cloud processing and data management through its ProjectWise and
AssetWise platforms, most impressively making huge amounts of point cloud data
available streaming via the cloud, so that users can pull down just that portion of the
point cloud they are working with at any given moment.
“You can deal with all of these large files now,” said
Bhupinder Singh, senior VP at Bentley, and point clouds become “a fundamental
data type. You don’t have to clog your networks with gigabytes of data being
transferred. You don’t need to haul around hard drives.”
Now, as Greg Bentley put it, “point clouds don’t need to be
throwaways.
Further, the Bentley Descartes image management software now
offers advanced 3D image and point cloud editing and processing. And through
newly announced collaborations with Adobe and Bluebeam software, users will be
able to export 3D pdfs with point clouds that they can navigate using nothing
more than Adobe Reader.
Singh likened the acquisition of Pointools to that of HMR
(Descartes), which Bentley bought 10 years ago. “Their unique value proposition
was 2D raster image manipulation,” he said, “and that team has grown to be a
critical part of Bentley Software … We see a similar trajectory for the
technology that Pointools brings to the table, and the people.”
Pointools co-founder Faraz Ravi will remain with the
company, as will the rest of Pointools’ employees. “In my new role,” Ravi said
in a statement, “I look forward to helping realize the vision of powering
next-generation point cloud workflows throughout the Bentley portfolio of
products.”
Greg Bentley said this acquisition would ultimately be good
for consumers, especially those who are passionate about open standards and
interoperability. “A lot of the best point cloud software developers in the
world work for hardware manufacturers now,” he said, “and that’s not ideal for
open software development.”
Point cloud engines have been in demand lately. In the past
month, AVEVA has purchased LFM from Z+F and Autodesk has purchased Alice Labs.
This would seem to indicate that the market agrees with Greg Bentley: “We
really believe the 3D raster will be everywhere, like the 2D raster. Point
clouds are useful in their own right. They’re not just the beginning of the
information stream; they’re increasingly valuable, and Pointools has proved
that to the world.
“I believe there are uses for point clouds that aren’t
anything like what we’re doing today.”
Bentley and Pointools will have their technology
collaboration on display at SPAR Europe, which opened yesterday in the Hague at
the World Forum and continues through tomorrow. LFM and AVEVA, and Autodesk and
Alice Labs, will also be showing their combined solutions.
For an example of Pointools capabilities, watch the following animation done from a scan made by Dave Southam of FARO UK, in his spare time: