engcgmo2010's Activities

Jagged profile on new geometry element when using "Profile by Slope from Element” and other projection tools

engcgmo2010 — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 21:39:49 GMT

I am using OpenRoads Designer CE 2021 Release 1 for an urban roadway project that utilizes a lot of custom Civil Cells for driveways. Today I deleted one of the driveway Civil Cells and replaced it by using new reference graphics. Everything seemed to work out okay until I tried adjusting the width of the driveway. I noticed that the cell seemed to be following a jagged vertical alignment along the roadway gutterline reference. I did a little troubleshooting and found that the profile along the gutterline, which is based on a 2% slope from my baseline geometry, was not smooth. I checked the profile along my roadway baseline and it was smooth so it didn’t make any sense why the gutterline profile, which is relative to the baseline profile, was not smooth. I investigated further by doing a partial offset of the baseline by 10’ and then setting the profile along this temporary geometry element using the “Profile by Slope from Element” command and using the baseline profile for a reference. Once again, I ended up with a jagged profile as shown in the attached image.

Out of curiosity I had one of the other engineers in the office, also using OpenRoads Designer CE 2021 Release 1, open the same file and try the exact same trouble shooting. He ended up with a nice smooth profile along the temporary geometry element. The only difference I can determine is we tried this on two different computers. I have not had this issue in the previous versions of OpenRoads using this same DGN file. Any ideas?

OpenRoads Designer 2020 Release 3 - Sheet Index Problems

engcgmo2010 — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 14:18:19 GMT

I am trying to work through what appears to be a bug in the Sheet Index. I set up the index with various folders so I could have series of sheet numbers such as C1.x, C2.x, etc. as shown in this screen shot.

This method works well for sheet numbering and I thought it would be a good way of tracking "sheet #" of "total sheets". The problem I'm having is that the sequence number of the models do not seem to be updating so the "sheet #" isn't updating correctly when I add or remove sheets. For instance, the sheet index shows sheet C3.1 to have a sequence number of "5". The "Place Sheet Index as Table" tool also shows a sequence number of "5" for the same sheet.

But the "Sheet #" on the actual page shows an incorrect sequence number of "3".

I did notice that even though the sheet index shows a sequence number of "5" the model properties show a sequence number of "3".

Is there a way to update the Model sequence number so it matches the sheet index sequence number?

ORD Connect Edition 2019, Release 1 - Geometry Point element placement problems

engcgmo2010 — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 19:09:40 GMT

I am trying to use the Geometry Point tool to place points in a 3D file at a particular elevation. I have noticed that sometimes when I snap to a 2D element (in an attached reference file) the point will not be placed. I have to snap and place multiple times before the point element shows up in the drawing. I have also noticed that when the points are actually placed, sometimes they have the correct elevation and other times they are placed at an elevation of 0.00. When I snap to the points in the 3D file some show the proper elevation and some show 0.00. On the points with a graphical elevation of 0.00 if I use the Properties tool it shows the points have the placed elevation and not 0.00.

Has anyone else run into this?

Openroads Designer 2019 Release 2 - Civil Cell Problems

engcgmo2010 — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 20:44:36 GMT

When ORD 2019 Release 1 came out we had issues getting the Civil Cells that were delivered with the software to work properly. To avoid the pitfalls associated with those Civil Cells we created our own. After a lot of study and trial and error I developed several stable cells that worked very well with our work flows.

We recently upgraded to Version 10.07.01.32 with the hopes that some of the bugs noted in previous versions had been addressed. Now the Civil Cells that I previously developed no longer work properly. It seems to have something to do with projecting profiles from one element to another. In previous versions of ORD if two geometry lines were at 90 degrees to one another you could project a profile at say 1.5% from one to the other and it would work. Now it seems like there is about a 50/50 chance that it will work. I also have a situation in one of the cells that I created where the angle between the lines is about 60 degrees and I can't get a profile to project. The lines even share a common end point.

I wanted to make sure what I was observing only happened in the latest release and not in the previous one so I went to a computer that had not yet been upgraded to the latest version. I tested the cell by dragging the control lines around trying to "break" the cell. I couldn't do it. Now if I open the cell in the most current version and drag the control lines around the cell graphics immediately fail.

Has anyone else noticed that civil cells are not working properly in the latest version? Has anyone had problems specifically with projecting profiles from one element to another?

Openroads Designer 2019 Release 1 - Civil Cell Problems

engcgmo2010 — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 21:36:49 GMT

We have recently upgraded to ORD 2019 Release 1 on one of our workstations and have been having problems with Civil Cells that worked in previous versions of ORD. For instance on an urban street renovation project we are working on we used the "Entrance Urban - Flared Entry" Civil Cell delivered with the program. This worked well because the cell configuration matched our proposed driveway and sidewalk geometry. If I create a corridor in ORD 2018 Release 4 on one machine and use the entrance civil cell it works as expected. If I create a corridor in ORD 2019 and try the cell the surface created by the cell seems to target elements that are over 300' in elevation below my corridor. I read in the release notes that several of the civil cells were updated for ORD 2019 to fix some problems. I've tried both the old and new cells and still have issues.

Has anyone else had this problem?

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Thu, 21 Mar 2019 01:14:41 GMT

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OpenRoads Designer Connect Edition - Annotation and Resolution Units

engcgmo2010 — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:22:19 GMT

We are currently transitioning from Power Inroads V8i to OpenRoads Designer Connect Edition. This is a big leap for us with regard to work flows. Right now we are trying to get all of our base standards set up.

One of the main issues I've noticed is the seed files that come with ORD have resolution units of 12,000 / Survey Foot. With these files the element annotation (for instance stationing of alignments) works fine and text heights are as expected. However, our standard seed files have resolution units of 304,800 / Survey foot. What changes do we need to make to achieve proper text height in files with different resolution units than the files provided with ORD?

Storm & Sanitary - Pick which face of an inlet a pipe connects to

engcgmo2010 — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 21:51:01 GMT

We use Select Series 2 Storm and Sanitary, sometimes for design and sometimes to generate storm profiles from manually computed structure elevations. On a recent site design I ran into two instances where the pipe I inserted between two structures seems to pick the wrong face on the upstream inlet for the connection point. We generally draw our network of structures and pipes and use the graphics to insert the structures in S&S. This works as a check between what we worked out by hand and S&S and allows us to see if structure sizes and rotations are correct and if we are using the right pipe size. We tell Inroads to show the pipe connection to the inside wall of the inlet and not the center because that is how we have always done our designs manually. Is there a way to force Inroads to connect to the face and not the side of an inlet?