"Geopak users enjoy a definitive competitive advantage using Criteria to automate design and ensure conformance to engineering standards," says Dean Bowman, Senior Vice President of Product Development for Geopak. "In Geopak 2000, we extend the power of Criteria to new contexts - plan and profile representation, automated quantities, intersection layout and even intelligent 3D modelling. Criteria functionality analyses existing conditions and uses the information to make intelligent design decisions. It can draw complex roadways and adjoining structures automatically, greatly improving productivity and accuracy of design."

"We have been impressed with Geopak since we implemented it five years ago and its Criteria capability has been a powerful way to automate plan production," says Pieter Ferreira of PFT, the number one Bentley MVAR in South Africa. "The new 3-Port Criteria in Geopak 2000 is even more dynamic and will enable the users to easily produce preliminary plans for numerous proposed alignments, thus letting us choose the best alignment earlier in our design process."

Geopak 2000 aims to strengthen the software line's renowned integration capabilities, further enabling its comprehensive field-to-field approach to civil design and engineering, without requiring expensive and unwieldy add-ons.

"We try to use everything Geopak offers because it allows us to use the same platform for a wide variety of projects, which improves efficiency in our office," says Corey Johnson, of WHKS Ames, Iowa. "I feel that Geopak is simply better than other civil software and easy to use."

The release further enriches capabilities for leveraging design information in construction and adds a new set of geotechnical tools. Geopak 2000 brings major uplifts to the product line, especially in plan production, graphical COGO (coordinate geometry) and super-elevation functionality. The new super-elevation tools will have the ability to accommodate all of the current super-elevation transition calculation methods.

Geopak 2000 enhancements

Offering improved flexibility in exporting design data directly to popular data collectors, Geopak 2000 enables engineering departments to provide critical horizontal, vertical and cross section information to construction. Improving its fast digital terrain modeling (DTM) software, the new product adds numerous new tools to Geopak DTM, including a unique visibility tool that lets users visualise the line of sight in all directions from any given point in the model.

Geopak 2000 delivers the latest in graphical COGO, using easy point-and-click operation. Component-based COGO capabilities enhance subdivision design right-of-way taking and easements, survey and GIS clean-up and street intersection design. New geotechnical capabilities offer subsurface representation in plan, profile and cross section views. The software uses borehole data to interpolate triangulated (TIN) models of subsurface materials.

Further enhancing Geopak's component-based capabilities for transportation design, the new release supports a wealth of transportation standards, such as curve and spiral tables, when generating horizontal and vertical alignments. In addition, Geopak 2000 now interfaces directly to Trimble Navigation's SiteVision software so that users can guide earth-moving equipment using DTM and global positioning system (GPS) technology. Information about Trimble's SiteVision software can be found at www.trimble.com

Enhancements applicable to all Geopak products include:

* Improved design and computation manager interface (only Geopak Road and Geopak Site).

* New profile labeller (Geopak Road and Geopak Site).

* Labeller enhancements.

Geopak road enhancements

* 3-port criteria.

* Graphical COGO.

* New, improved component-based horizontal and vertical alignment tools.

* New superelevation/shape manager tool set.

Geopak survey adjustments

* New OBS editor.

* Can reduce organiser Tachi books (for South Africa).

* Compass and traverse rule adjustment option.

* Transit rule adjustment option.

* Rewrite of best fit alignment tool (well-suited for rehabilitation work).

Geopak drainage

* A new culvert tool (has been available as a MR since July 99).

* New superelevation shape compatibility.

* Import and export directly to/from HECRAS.

Geopak site

* Adding Geopak geotechnical tools (also in Geopak Road).

* Adding tools to accommodate subdivision design.

* Adding water and sewer.

Geopak Bridge

Development on Geopak Bridge is proceeding on two fronts. Firstly, Geopak 2000 has been enhanced with new beam layout tools, and the inclusion of tools from Geopak Road such as COGO, horizontal and vertical alignment design, shape tools and DTM manager. Secondly, a completely new Geopak Bridge application is being designed from the ground up using JMDL and ProjectBank. It will be released in 2001.

Geopak Rebar

* Includes South African standards - also included is spiral bars.

* Dynamic dimension alignment options.

* Production of bar charts optimised with 10 x speed improvements.

* Many new bar chart commands.

* Many new preset text commands.

* Additional bar shapes and Display.Sys parameters.

* Multiline longitudinal bar labelling.

PFT

(012) 664 3771

ronel&pft.co.za

www.Bentley.com