3. Aecosim and GC
GC has exposed a lot mainly architectural elements in ABD using wrappers to form 'nodes', but it is only skimming the surface. GC has in the past relied on using ABD's TF COM interface to get access. I suppose this will be ported to the new Net based API's in CE. Seems like the number of dll's in the Assemblies folder increases every year and the number of SDK's provided by the verticals will also multiply? GC has some nodes/wrappers to access ABD's objects and the data in them, and also ABD's 'database' ie its DataGroup System. But, other verticals will have different 'databases'. Maybe when SQLite comes along, there will be some much needed consistency.
There is also the option in theory to access more data by using the dotNET dll's if the user is capable of writing his own wrappers. I suppose that Mstn would be the benchmark for dotNET and published schemas. GC provides a visual IDE for this kind of work in the form of its Generated Node Type. i-model Transformer also provides a visual IDE to manipulate data that has been exposed and 'serialised'(?) as Item/EC format data. Maybe when dgn's go dgndb and SQLite becomes the underlying format for Bentley, there will be universal access and no need to write wrappers.
4. Aecosim and Descartes
You would think that merging the two verticals would be easy as both would just write to totally separate databases. PointClouds and BIM data are pretty different. And PC /Reality Mesh info is not very parametric. But invitably, there will be overlaps and opportunities. For example, Descartes has developed some niftty synchronised Section Manager that would be good to add to Mstn's Hypermodeling offering and ABD's Floor Manager functionality. It would be good to have handles, hooks or methods or whatever to access these tools to allow say GC or Prostructures to drive or derive the camera/DV info for automation purposes.
Decartes and Mstn has also provided some Classification tools, where Mstn elements like lines and slabs are used to clip the Reality Mesh. I can see that companion apps needing to access these tools to manage LOD (RealityMesh<>PointClouds<>Laser survey<>BIM elements) for example.