UK’s Martyn Day, a design technology journalist specializing in CAD, has today’s must-read story, involving Bentley Systems’ MicroStation CAD system, SketchUp, and Google. He concludes:

For the [CAD] industry as a whole, which has struggled to promote and ‘assist’ users to move to 3D – the news is that Google owns a great, easy to use 3D creation tool and will distribute it, promote it and invest in it. It appears to be the biggest kick in the backside this industry has ever had. Suddenly 3D models are cool, Google Earth is the platform and Bentley has suddenly been promoted to leading the charge at the professional-end of this new digital geocentric paradigm.

If I read it right, Bentley is the ESRI of CAD:-) Read the whole thing; Martyn’s views are evidently infused with a deep knowledge of the CAD industry. And if you don’t read the whole thing, at least look at his eye candy.

(Bentley was looking for beta testers for its converters to KML last month, blogged here.)