Bentley Systems Acquires Pointools

Bentley Systems has acquired UK-based Pointools Ltd, a hardware-neutral provider of point-cloud software technology, in order to integrate point-cloud processing throughout its product portfolio, thus facilitating information mobility with integrity across design and operational workflows.  

Point-cloud scanning devices are fast becoming commonplace, so images are now cost-effective to capture, but have served only for temporary and task-specific purposes because the scale of the data files overwhelms both storage and query accessibility. Now that Bentley is uniquely overcoming these challenges, point-clouds, as a fundamental data type, can usefully serve the function of an "as-operated" 3D model for every infrastructure asset.

Through its acquisition of Pointools, Bentley is able to go beyond embedding the Vortex engine in MicroStation, to assimilate point-cloud processing and data management through the ProjectWise and AssetWise platforms, extending point-cloud value through all Bentley solutions, applications, and workflows. At the same time, with the introduction of the V8i (SELECTseries 3) upgrade, the Bentley Descartes image management software now becomes the leading information modelling environment for 3D image and point-cloud editing and processing.

Bhupinder Singh, senior vice president, Bentley Software, explained that with Pointools, the company unlocks the value of the gigabytes or even terabytes of point-cloud data to surmount the ‘big data' problem of point-cloud users. A new ProjectWise capability will stream on-demand to Bentley applications only the subset of point-cloud data being viewed or queried. This functionality is what has been needed to allow point-clouds to fulfil their potential as an intrinsic, fundamental data type in information modelling workflows.

Pointools' Vortex engine is developed to the requirements of architectural, engineering, and construction projects due to its unrivalled ability to handle the very largest point-cloud datasets, comprising billions of points, and from virtually every scanning source. The Pointools POD file format retains key information pertaining to the origin of the point-cloud data (provenance) including scanner type, original scan file name, scan date, scan location, and scan keywords. This information can be indexed and searched to more quickly locate models when managed, referenced, and maintained in Bentley's ProjectWise collaboration and work-sharing platform.