CONNECT Advisor

INSTALLATION AND ADMINISTRATION GUIDE

Bentley Systems Inc.

Contents
What is CONNECT Advisor? ....................................................................................................................................... 2

Pre-requisites ............................................................................................................................................................... 2

Supported OS .............................................................................................................................................................. 3

Getting Started ............................................................................................................................................................ 3

Installation Steps .........................................................................................................................................................4

Uninstallation Steps .................................................................................................................................................. 10

Silent Installation and Uninstallation ...................................................................................................................... 12

Working with CONNECT Advisor for V8i Applications ......................................................................................... 12

Working with CONNECT Advisor for CONNECT Edition Applications ............................................................... 14

FAQ ............................................................................................................................................................................. 15

Supported Bentley Products .................................................................................................................................... 16

Contact ....................................................................................................................................................................... 17

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What is CONNECT Advisor?
CONNECT Advisor is a desktop application which provides a unified interface for you to interact
with various available Bentley content in one location, thereby eliminating the need to browse to
various sources individually.
This feature in CONNECT Advisor boosts productivity as it reduces the time required to access
and get the information.

Pre-requisites
CONNECT Advisor requires you to be a CONNECTED user. You should have an account at the
http://connect.bentley.com portal and using that information, be able to login into the
CONNECTION Client.

CONNECT Advisor provides personalized content; hence it is necessary that you have a valid
CONNECT account.

Because of the above requirement, latest CONNECTION Client needs to be installed on your
desktop. If it is not available, then CONNECT Advisor will install one for you.

CONNECT Advisor works only with an installed Bentley Product. You need to have any one of
the supported Bentley Products to access the features of the CONNECT Advisor
Please see below the list of Supported Bentley Products for V8i Applications.
CONNECT Edition products already come with CONNECT Advisor enabled, however you still
need to run the installer to get the recent updates.

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Supported OS

Operating Systems 32 bit 64 bit Remarks

Win XP, Windows Vista and below   Not supported

Windows 7 SP1   Requires .NET Framework 4.6.1

Windows 8, 8.1   Requires .NET Framework 4.6.1

Windows 10   Requires .NET Framework 4.6.1

Getting Started
1. Latest Bentley CONNECT Advisor can be found on the Bentley Downloads page (Fulfillment

Center)

2. Go to the latest available build (e.g. 100100103en1 at the time of writing this document)

3. Run the setup.exe found in the products folder

4. Use the 32 bit installer for 32 bit x86 OS and the 64 bit installer for x64 OS.
5. Follow the Installer using the steps given
6. Default installation location is

o 32 bit – “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Bentley Shared\CONNECT Advisor”

o 64 bit – “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Bentley Shared\CONNECT Advisor”

7. CONNECT Advisor integrates with the all the supported application(s) installed on your machine.

8. On uninstalling CONNECT Advisor, the integration from all the products is automatically removed.
See uninstallation steps

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Installation Steps
1. After launching the setup.exe, CONNECT Advisor Installer starts with the initial screen,

Accept the “End User Licensing Terms” and click Next to continue

2. This screen lists out all the actions that will be executed, if you choose to install CONNECT
Advisor, click Install to continue

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3. On clicking on the Install button, the Installer will proceed ahead and create a “System Restore
Point” as a standard installation procedure.

4. If “Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1” is not available, the installer will install one for you

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5. If “CONNECTION Client” is not already installed, the installer will install the latest released
CONNECTION Client.

6. After all the above pre-requisites are installed, CONNECT Advisor installation will start

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7. If the installation is successful, the final screen is shown as below, click Finish to complete the
installation process

8. After the installation is complete, you can see the list of v8i applications integrated with

CONNECT Advisor

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9. You can now login into CONNECTION client and start using the CONNECT Advisor

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10. If the CONNECT Advisor installation was successful, you can see its entry in the “Programs and
Features” section of the Control Panel

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Uninstallation Steps
1. To Uninstall CONNECT Advisor follow the steps below, from the “Programs and Features” section
of the Control Panel, select CONNECT Advisor and click “Uninstall”

2. On Starting uninstall, the following screen will be shown, Click Next to Continue

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3. A confirmation dialog will be shown, only after clicking “Uninstall”, the actual uninstallation will
start

4. Uninstallation of CONNECT Advisor will begin and complete.

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Silent Installation and Uninstallation
We can also install and uninstall CONNECT Advisor silently using command prompt,
Commands are as follows:

For Installation:
%nameofinstaller%.exe /s

For installation of specific products:

%nameofinstaller%.exe /s PRODUCTS=<Products Name>
E.g.
CONNECTAdvisorSetup.exe /s PRODUCTS=”MicroStation V8i(SELECTseries 4);Power Rail
Track V8i (SELECTseries4)”

For Uninstallation:
%nameofinstaller%.exe /s -uninstall

Working with CONNECT Advisor for V8i Applications

1. When you launch the product that is integrated with CONNECT Advisor, you will see a toolbox as
shown below

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2. If the toolbox is not visible, it can be configured by the following method

o Press Ctrl+T to bring up the ToolBox Window

o OR Click on Tools->ToolBoxes to bring up the ToolBox Window

3. Scroll down the list of available ToolBoxes and make sure that the CONNECT Advisor toolbox is
selected
4. You should now to able to Launch CONNECT Advisor, by clicking on the CONNECT Advisor icon

as in step 1 above.

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Working with CONNECT Advisor for CONNECT Edition Applications

1. When you launch a CONNECT Edition product that is integrated with CONNECT Advisor, you will

see the CONNECT Advisor toolbox as shown below

2. If this toolbox is not available, please get in touch with the product support for more information

on CONNECT Advisor

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FAQ
1. Where can I download CONNECT Advisor from?

You can download CONNECT Advisor from the Fulfilment Center. Please follow these steps to
download:
1. Open the Fulfillment Center URL from here
2. Select “All Downloads”
3. Download the latest version by selecting the “Download” icon next to
“Bentley CONNECT Advisor (English) 32-bit” for 32 bit OS
“Bentley CONNECT Advisor (English) 64-bit” for 64 bit OS

2. Does CONNECT Advisor update using CONNECTION Client?

Yes, if you have CONNECT Advisor already installed on your computer, you can download and
install CONNECT Advisor from the CONNECTION Client. CONNECT Advisor will replace any earlier
versions of CONNECT Advisor V8i and update it to the latest version available. Sign into the
CONNECTION Client to view and apply your Application updates.

3. What products, release labels and languages are supported by CONNECT Advisor in the initial
release?
Most V8i Power Platform-based Bentley Applications are supported. For specific listing, please
refer to Supported Bentley Products below.
CONNECT Edition PowerPlatform based products come with CONNECT Advisor pre-installed

4. How does CONNECT Advisor integrate into the v8i Bentley Products?
CONNECT Advisor creates a config file and loads it on product startup.
This is achieved by adding CONNECTAdvisor.cfg file in the config/appl folder of the product
installation.

5. I do not use the delivered config file, how can I integrate CONNECT Advisor into my v8i Product?
Make sure, you have CONNECT Advisor installed and your product is in the supported v8i
Products list.
Close all running instances of your product.
Go to your product installation directory.
Go to the directory “config/appl” in your product installation directory.
Locate the config file “CONNECTAdvisor.cfg”.
Open the config file in a text editor
You should see the following line in the .cfg file

_USTN_FIRSTDGNFILE > CONNECTAdvisor.dll

This would allow the product to load the CONNECT Advisor binaries on the startup.

For the CONNECT Advisor ToolBox to be visible, copy the delivered “CONNECTAdvisor.dgnlib”
into the workspace folder where you have your existing dgnlibs. You can also review “Working
with CONNECT Advisor” section above on how to enable CONNECT Advisor ToolBox.

All these files are delivered with CONNECT Advisor and are available in the mdlapps folder in your
installation location.

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 6. What is the price of CONNECT Advisor?
CONNECT Advisor is currently complimentary to our users. Users can access content through
CONNECT Advisor based on their specific Bentley entitlements.

7. How will users get support for CONNECT Advisor?

You can get support for CONNECT Advisor through our respective Technical Support teams.

8. What new changes and features are available in this version of CONNECT Advisor?
Refer to the Readme.txt file delivered with CONNECT Advisor. This file should be residing in the
Documentation folder of the CONNECT Advisor install location.

Supported Bentley Products

The following Bentley Products are supported.

No Product Base SS1 SS2 SS3 SS4 SS5 SS6 SS7 SS8 SS9

1 AECOsim Building Designer V8i         

2 AECOsim Energy Simulator V8i          
3 Bentley Descartes V8i          
4 Bentley Map Enterprise V8i          
5 Bentley Map PowerView V8i          
6 Bentley Map V8i          
7 Bentley MicroStation V8i          
8 Bentley MX V8i          
9 Bentley Navigator V8i          
10 Bentley OpenPlant Modeler V8i          
11 Bentley OpenUtilities Designer V8i 
12 Bentley OpenUtilities Map V8i 
13 Bentley OpenUtilities PowerView V8i 
14 Bentley Power GEOPAK V8i          
15 Bentley Power InRoads V8i          
16 Bentley PowerCivil for Denmark V8i          
17 Bentley PowerCivil for North America V8i          
18 Bentley PowerCivil for Sweden V8i          
19 Bentley PowerCivil for UK and Ireland V8i         
20 Bentley PowerCivil V8i          
21 Bentley PowerMap Field V8i          
22 Bentley PowerMap V8i          

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23 Bentley PowerRebar V8i          
24 Bentley PowerSurvey V8i          
25 Bentley Raceway and Cable Management V8i          
26 Bentley Substation V8i          
27 Bentley topoGRAPH          
28 Bentley topoGRAPH Projects          
29 Bentley Utilities Designer V8i  
30 Bentley View     
31 Bentley(R) OpenPlant PowerPID V8i          
32 ConstructSim V8i          
33 GenerativeComponents V8i          
34 MicroStation PowerDraft V8i          
35 MineCycle Designer          
36 MineCycle Material Handling V8i          
37 MineCycle Survey V8i          
38 OpenBridge Modeler V8i          
39 OpenPlant Isometrics Manager V8i   
40 OpenPlant Orthographics Manager V8i          
41 OpenPlant Support Engineering V8i          
42 Power Rail Overhead Line V8i          
43 Power Rail Track V8i          
44 PowerStructural Modeler V8i          
45 promis-e V8i          
46 ProStructures V8i          

Contact

For any issues and questions related to this document, please drop an email with your questions to the
following

Product Manager Ashit Gandhi ashit.gandhi@bentley.com

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