BIM Q&A | Discussion: Can Bentley Software Support Forward BIM Design for Comprehensive Pipe Galleries (Terrain, Road, and Pipe Gallery Modeling)?
I am a designer at a municipal engineering institute in Shanghai, currently starting out with BIM. My primary focus is on designing urban underground comprehensive pipe galleries. I am exploring whether BIM can be effectively used for the forward design process of these pipe galleries.
So far, I have experience with Autodesk’s Revit and Civil 3D. Civil 3D handles terrain and road modeling well, while Revit manages 3D modeling of pipe gallery nodes without much trouble. However, I have encountered some challenges:
- Revit struggles with modeling standard pipe gallery sections, especially when it comes to flat and vertical turning sections. Most solutions rely on custom-built families. Since pipe galleries are usually constructed along roads with slopes, it is difficult to accurately represent these slopes in Revit.
- There is no seamless integration of the 3D models for terrain, roads, and pipe galleries into a single unified model that can generate coordinated 2D drawings. As a result, the models are mostly limited to conceptual design or presentation stages (often imported into Infraworks for visualization), and cannot fully support initial design and construction drawing production for the entire pipe gallery system.
Previously, I came across Bentley’s software on forums, which reportedly supports importing terrain data for building modeling. Therefore, I have a couple of questions for experienced professionals:
- Does Bentley software provide the real 3D modeling capabilities that I am looking for?
- Which Bentley software products can import 3D terrain and road models and enable 3D pipe gallery modeling based on them?
I welcome everyone to join the discussion. Experts who have used Bentley or other BIM software for urban comprehensive pipe gallery projects are especially encouraged to share their insights.
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