Bentley Systems and Siemens have teamed up to demonstrate the kind of future enabled by cloud-based computing. PlantSight, a digital twin tool for plant management is a cloud-based tool for plant management built on technology from both partners and it provides access to capabilities as customers need them. It is an example of how combines can work together to improve the capabilities they offer to their customers.
It could be argued that the visualization is the whole point of CAD. Providing a shared view of a project that can be understood by all people involved on a project. At Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2018 conference in Singapore this year, Bentley Systems and Siemens introduced a new visualization tool that brings together 3D scanning, visualization, and AI to help plant owner/operators bring the benefits of digital twins to the built environment as well as manage new projects. The two companies have been collaborating on this front, especially in 3D scanning and point cloud technologies for several years because they share customers in this space and both companies are very interested in the opportunities posed by the built environment and digital twins.
A plant is a living thing. Once designed, the plant almost immediately starts to change as it goes into operation. So even when design models are created with the intention of using them in plant operation, there has to be some way to connect them to the plant’s real-life operations or the models quickly go out of date. Plants provide the perfect demonstration of digital twins: what works, what’s not working, and what has to be fixed.
In addition, a plant is also a very big example of an IoT application because a plant, like a factory, is just full of things that have to keep working, they have to be monitored and they may have to be repaired or replaced.
Siemens and Bentley created PlantSight as a result of their years-long collaboration and experience in the plant industries. The companies say they’re building a tool that connects the engineering data with the physical reality to provide insight into the plant’s workings with a high degree of trustworthiness.
PlantSight is cloud based so that all users are accessing the most up-to-date data. The technology has been built to provide access to complementary elements of Siemens’ Comos, Bentley’s OpenPlant, Siemens’ MindSphere and Teamcenter.
Siemens and Bentley Systems have jointly developed PlantSight and they’ll continue working together, but the companies will be able to sell PlantSight separately and compete against each other as well. They want to be able to work with the customer in the most appropriate way.
