Unified File Formats and Multiple Solvers Increase Information Mobility Across Bentley’s Sewer and Storm Software, Enhancing the Efficiency of Sewer and Stormwater Modeling Teams

EXTON, Pa. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — November 29, 2012 — Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure, today announced that the forthcoming SewerCAD, SewerGEMS, StormCAD, and CivilStorm V8i (SELECTseries 3) releases will have a unified file format. As a result, users of each of these software products can now directly open models created in any one of the other three, eliminating the need to import one type of file into another. To support this streamlined workflow, the same hydraulic element types are now available in all four products. Together, these enhancements increase information mobility across the Bentley portfolio of sewer and stormwater products, reducing the risk of data loss and thus increasing not only users’ return on data but also the quality of some of their most complex projects.

Numerous solvers have been proposed for the equations that describe wastewater collection system hydraulics because the calculations are so difficult to perform. They require users to solve equations for partly full and full pipes with pumps and various control structures, and conditions can change during the simulations. Until now, users were forced to rely on manual workarounds when importing a model that included a hydraulic element for which calculations were not supported in the destination application’s solver.

Dr. Thomas Walski, Bentley senior product manager, explained, “The new unified file format and support for all hydraulic element types in the new releases of our sewer and stormwater products have made modeling teams’ workflows a great deal more efficient. This means that a model created in any one of these products can be seamlessly opened and edited in another. The huge time savings that result from this improved information mobility are especially valued by the large, distributed project teams using any or all of these software products. It also means that the inconvenience of data model differences that occurred during imports prior to our new unified file format have now been eliminated, saving time and user challenges resulting from model inconsistencies.”

For more details on the numerical engines supported by each product, and to learn when it’s best to use each solver, please download Dr. Walski’s technical briefing note “What Is the Right Way to Analyze Collection System Hydraulics.”

In addition to the new unified file format, the V8i (SELECTseries 3) releases of Bentley’s sewer and storm water software also include the following new features:

• The SewerCAD and StormCAD solvers are now included in SewerGEMS, making SewerGEMS a full superset of SewerCAD, StormCAD, and CivilStorm. This enables the automated design of sanitary and storm sewers in SewerGEMS.
• The StormCAD solver is now also included in CivilStorm, making CivilStorm a superset of StormCAD. This enables the automated design of storm sewers in CivilStorm.
• All four products can now publish i-models (containers for the open exchange of infrastructure information) in 2D or 3D.
• Low-impact development controls can now be analyzed in SewerGEMS, SewerCAD, and CivilStorm.
• Culvert inlet control calculations are also available in StormCAD and SewerCAD (in addition to SewerGEMS, CivilStorm, and PondPack).
• HEC-22 inlet capture efficiency calculations are automatically performed when using the SWMM solver in SewerGEMS and CivilStorm.
• Pond outlet structure calculations are now available in StormCAD and SewerCAD (in addition to CivilStorm, PondPack, and SewerGEMS).
• Support for catchment elements is now available in SewerCAD (in addition to CivilStorm, StormCAD, PondPack, and SewerGEMS).
• Support for v-shaped and parabolic gutters is now available in SewerGEMS, CivilStorm, and StormCAD.
• Support for pressure elements, including pumps, is now available in StormCAD (in addition to SewerGEMS, SewerCAD, and CivilStorm).
• Node headloss calculations in accordance with HEC-22 3^rd Edition are now available in SewerGEMS, CivilStorm, and StormCAD.
• The input and results fields are automatically filtered according to the solver used.