ATLANTA, GA -- March 20, 2002 -- Building Systems Design announces the immediate availability of a new version of its premier construction cost estimating software product, BSD CostLink(R)/CM. Released in early March 2002, the new CostLink/CM has many new features, including interactive linking with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

With this latest release, CostLink/CM users are now able to maintain project "models" within Excel spreadsheets, requiring only minimal parameter changes in the Excel model to change numerous quantity fields in a CostLink/CM project. When a user changes a cell in an Excel worksheet that changes the values of other cells, the corresponding values in CM are also saved, regardless of whether or not the CM project is currently active. When the CM project is opened later, the values are automatically updated. The software allows linking a single cell in Excel to multiple items in a CM project, as well as allowing linking to multiple CM projects from a single spreadsheet.

Communication between BSD CostLink/CM and Microsoft Excel is handled by an intermediate application called aecLinkMan(TM) that runs in the background. The links between applications are stored in a database managed by LinkMan, eliminating the need for both applications to be open concurrently. The software also allows the user to suspend linking at any time, in order to freeze quantities.

The new Excel linking feature complements other linking capabilities already built into CostLink/CM. Users have long been able to export data from CM to Primavera's P3 scheduling software and to Microsoft Project. More recently, the ability to export data from Seagates' Crystal Reports was added for enhanced formatting capability. For more information about BSD CostLink/CM version 3.0, call BSD at 888-BSD-SOFT (888-273-7638) or visit www.bsdsoftlink.com.