With the advent of the CONNECT Edition, Bentley moved toward a more connected, cloud-integrated ecosystem. This shift increased the reliance on the Prerequisite Pack, specifically regarding the .NET Framework and web communication components. As applications became more interconnected with ProjectWise and Bentley’s cloud services, the requirement for robust, up-to-date system libraries grew.
Or using the bundled MSI:
The primary function of the Prerequisite Pack is to mitigate the "DLL Hell" that historically plagued Windows-based engineering software. In a professional environment, a workstation might host multiple engineering applications, each potentially requiring different versions of the same shared library. If Bentley software were to rely solely on whatever libraries were currently installed on the machine, the risk of version conflicts would be high. bentley desktop application pre-requisite pack