Software Speeds and Simplifies the Capture of Real-world Context

LONDON — (BUSINESS WIRE) — November 2, 2015 — The Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference – Bentley Systems, Incorporated, a leading global provider of comprehensive software solutions for advancing infrastructure, today announced General Access to its new ContextCapture offering. ContextCapture is Bentley’s first product release of the Acute3D software technology it acquired earlier this year. The software is ideally suited for any organization that could apply 3D models of real-world context to benefit infrastructure design, construction, or operations.

With ContextCapture, users can easily produce high resolution 3D models of existing conditions using photos taken with any digital camera. The software generates a detailed reality mesh incorporating the referenced photography. This results in a navigable 3D model with fine and photorealistic detail, sharp edges, and precise geometric accuracy. These highly detailed models can be of virtually any size or resolution, up to city scale, and created much more quickly than with other technologies.

Bentley also announced General Access to ContextCapture Center for “grid computing” power to dramatically expedite processing time for very large models (typically involving more than 30 gigapixels of imagery).

Taking Acute3D technology to the next level, Bentley’s new ContextCapture offers significant new advantages to users, including:

• a new multi-platform browser plug-in and desktop viewer that supports multi-touch and allows users to easily and consistently share reality meshes on desktop and mobile devices, even for models of entire cities;
• enhanced level-of-detail generation and adaptive tiling, including tools for surface and volume measurement;
• directly providing context for engineering and geospatial workflows, including native support within MicroStation CONNECT Edition;

Pascal Martinez, Bentley Systems director of business development, said, “ContextCapture offers a new and versatile way of capturing reality to serve as context for design, monitoring, inspection, and surveying processes, complementing Bentley Pointools and Bentley Descartes. I’m pleased to say that reality meshes produced by ContextCapture can now be intrinsically integrated throughout Bentley’s common modeling environment, by way of native support within MicroStation CONNECT Edition.”

David Byrne, technical director, AEROmetrex, said, “With ContextCapture, we’re able to automatically construct highly detailed 3D models of virtually any size for our clients, faster and at much less cost than with traditional methods. But what’s most powerful is the amazing context that it provides to facilitate better decisions throughout design, construction, and operations. ContextCapture allows you to create a fully photo-textured, geographically located 3D model, all derived directly from digital photography. And, once the models have been built, they can be quickly and easily viewed on any desktop or mobile device. We think ContextCapture is going to revolutionize the geospatial industry.”

ContextCapture, and digital photography including from UAVs, can provide any infrastructure professional with:

• unrivaled 3D mesh creation and optimization from ordinary photographs, with high-quality texture mapping and optimal aerotriangulation accuracy;
• high performance, through multi-core support and optimization for use with general purpose graphics processing units;
• extensive scalability through sophisticated tiling mechanisms and “grid computing” support;
• robust and flexible publishing capabilities to produce and publish 3D visualization-ready models through a variety of formats and viewer applications with the required level-of-detail – in a way that maintains the highest quality but minimizes hardware requirements.

For additional information:

• ContextCapture and the ContextCapture Center
• The Be Inspired Awards Program
• The Year in Infrastructure 2015 Conference

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About Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems is a global leader in providing architects, engineers, geospatial professionals, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for advancing the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure. Bentley users leverage information mobility across disciplines and throughout the infrastructure lifecycle to deliver better-performing projects and assets. Bentley solutions encompass MicroStation applications for information modeling , ProjectWise collaboration services to deliver integrated projects , and AssetWise operations services to achieve intelligent infrastructure – complemented by worldwide professional services and comprehensive managed services.