LumenRT laundry list of issues, problems and concerns

Months ago I purchased LumenRt 2015 and it took me months to get it properly installed and running on both my Mac and a laptop PC. I do not use Micro-station or any of the other Bentley products. It was only through the gracious help of Dave Burdick that I was even able to use LumentRT for a project, yet the entire project has been plagued with the software not performing properly. Some of those problems have been linked to hardware limitations and the rest is software related. I have created an outline of my most basic an persistent problems associated with LumenRT. If you have input or solutions, please let me and others know. Based upon the lack of postings I see specific to LumenRT, I am already concerned if I will see any responses. One suggestion would be for the forum to have a LumentRT specific category other than the general visualization one I see.

Consistent problems: 

Crashes that are both predictable and non-predictable 

Tools not performing properly or at all 

Taking still images consistently freezes/crashes the application 

.lrt files do not necessarily transfer between Mac and PC reliably. 

Tools stop working at times and have to reopen the application to get them to work again. 

Shadows do not always show up properly in still images

 

Concerns: 

Tool set extremely limited 

Tools inconsistent in performance 

Object tools unpredictable in performance 

THERE NEEDS TO BE AN ERASER TOOL with a collection of options, so that editing/cleaning up objects placed do not take the exhausted process currently required.

Extremely limited [WAY TOO limited] pallet of both objects and terrain textures. IT lacks even a most basic DIRT option or Decomposed Granite of assorted colors. 

Should have a user create-able/editable layers palate to allow needed control and management of a file. This is marketed as a stand alone application - Treat it that way! 

- Allows to create different activity scenes to the same file instead of having to manage/create multiple files that currently has no capacity for copy and paste between. 

- provides the opportunity to experiment with different design sets and visualize them by turning on and off the layers. 

- Providing subset layers would be even better in file management by expanding or collapsing them in the palette. 

- Providing pull off/tear off menus would greatly help saving work time.

Should have COPY CUT and PASTE functions that work globally in the application for many reasons 

- Would save many hours of creating or replicating objects or groups of objects 

- If a file is corrupt, selecting and placing objects/groups of objects into a new file would save much work effort. 

- There are many other good reasons and invite everyone else to come up with their own list. 

I could go on, yet I need to see want work I can get done for now and wanted to at least get this out there to see what help might come back. 

Thanks, 

Ron

Parents
  • Ron,
    out-of-topic question, but what was / were reasons you went for LumenRT? when you say you do not use MicroStation, there are other options for software capable to do same things and maybe even better I guess.
    thanks

    /pt

  • Peter,
    Simple answer to your question. I was not that aware of other applications at the time and was a little familiar with Vue, which was also created by e-on Software. I was impressed by what Vue could create and was looking for a more appropriate architectural solution. LumenRT was marketed as that solution. I was also looking for an application that could work on a Mac and with the applications I was using, one of which is Vectorworks. Prior to purchase, I had a detailed conversation with Lee from e-on and another with a representative at Bentley who was responsible for LumenRT since Bentley just acquired it. Both told me that is has the equal capacity as both an integrated solution and stand alone product. Also, the LumenRT site advertises on one of its pages (I sent a screen shot of this to David Burdick) the ability for it to be used with Vectorworks as well as Cinema 4D, both applications that I use. Although through those applications by using the right export mode, it is possible to import models, however it is now discovered through the help of Dave, they are not good methods.

    I also chose LumenRT because it was advertised as being equally capable on both Mac and Windows platforms, which was verified by Lee at e-on. I have since discovered through Dave, using LumenRT on the Mac is inferior to what it can do on the Windows platform. I am also experiencing that taking a file that I work on in Windows, shows up as a corrupt file when I try and open it up on the Mac.

    I Like the idea of what LumenRT can create. Unfortunately I am finding it is not delivering on the promise as an well engineered product, because of much instability as well as limited functions to it's toolset or the design of them. I also get the feeling it is not as supported an application as marketed. The lack of postings related to LumenRT in this forum as well as your response being the only one related to my post, seems to enforce that perception. I hope I am wrong and I hope the application can be quickly improved on both platforms, better supported with manuals/tutorials and valuable tips. If I felt it would have enough influence toward these improvements, I am happy to support that process with input. I would rather become a strong user, supporter and advocate of LumenRT as opposed to dumping it.

    Thanks for your questions and hopefully you and others have some strong suggestions to share.

    Ron
  • Agreed concerning the forums. The lack of which is a pretty significant hindrance to using LumenRT effectively. Which version of LumenRT are you using?
  • Jerry,
    Thanks for you feedback. I think the primary issue is not so much that one doesn't exist, it's that it is difficult to find and it isn't very robust. LumenRT discussions represent a fraction of the forum you identified since it is merged together with three other software programs, of which may or may not have any interest to LumenRT users. Further the majority of the LumenRT posts on that forum either have no responses at all or responses that are 5-10 days after the post. As a user I can't wait 5-10 days to get an answer if I'm going to use the software for any appreciable reason.

    A robust forum is made even more important by the fact that the documentation for LumenRT is hard to find, incomplete, or simply not very helpful. To be fair this was true when the software was under the e-on umbrella but again the forums provided a fall back to address issues.

    I understand that forums are free resources but they're also marketing tools. They aren't created and maintained for altruistic reasons. More to the point, the old forums, while not perfect, were more active than the new Bentley ones. I don't understand why a year after the acquisition things have moved backwards. Are people having difficulty finding them or was there a drastic dropoff in the number of users? It's the primary reason I decided not to renew our maintenance with Bentley, it just doesn't seem like they are interested in fostering this community. I currently don't have another software alternative so I'm still using LumenRT but I wasn't willing to spend more money (or actually my organization's money) when I didn't know what I would be getting.

    To be clear, I actually really like the product and would love to keep it in my workflow but it seems that everything is 50% harder/more ineffective than it needs to be. For example, I still can't find any documentation that says that the new version has been released and what the differences are from the last version. This is pretty much a bare minimum for software releases and something e-on did frequently.

    I appreciate your time reading this and I'm certainly not calling you out. You were just the first representative I encountered that I thought might be able to address some of these concerns.

    Scott
  • Hi Scott,

    I am not sure why LumenRT Community was lumped in with the others if you want to post LumenRT questions to Visualization Community I am sure plenty of users will see them here. For what it is worth I host a Visualization Special Interest Group every month to talk about visualization topics and on numerous occasion I have showed and discussed LumenRT, these are recorded so you should be able to watch the recordings from the link. This is great place for users such as yourself or Ron to attend ask questions or even request features. Just yesterday I showed how to create LumenRT content and even how to use Adobe Fuse to create your animated characters. I know there are a lot of YouTube videos posted that I learned from in the beginning. For me LumenRT is dead simple to use and I have used it for absolutely huge projects without problems that being said I do have some stellar hardware, lots of memory and high end GPUs.

    We pay attention here at Bentley I know Ron started this thread and he mentions all the help from Dave Burdick but I helped him as well. I cannot speak for using a Mac but some of Ron's issues could very well be hardware related. Just to be clear LumenRT is meant to be a tool for visualizing your designs and not a design tool. The workflow is that the model comes from a design package like MicroStation and changes to the model other than jazzing it up with trees, people, vehicles etc should be done in the design package. If you want to be able to create content without having to use a Bentley product you can do that too. You can load OBJ or DAE files directly into LumenRT you can even drag the files onto the LumenRT window (on a PC) I am not sure what Ron is using to get his design into LumenRT but surely he can create at least an OBJ file. If you are using MicroStation CONNECT Edition we let you export a VUE object or VOB file this is the same as native LumenRT object LOB files. If you use Bentley products yes the process can be even more straight forward.

    Now while cut, copy and paste could possibly be implemented at some point, currently it is not and this does not mean LumenRT is poorly engineered. It means that up till now we have never had a single user request the feature. I don't see this as being a huge deal when you could be using your design package for adding for instance an array of bollards or street lights with some know spacing hit the export button and you are done. The content you added in LumenRT is retained, If my building, bridge, roadway or whatever it is I am try to visualize changes that should always be accomplished in the design package not in LumenRT.

    As far as training goes try searching web on LumenRT tutorials I easily found10 pages of stuff, this is how I learned LumenRT before E-on was acquired by Bentley. You can try this link if you at logged into this community there is some training here

    Hope this helps.....

    Cheers,

    Jerry

  • Jerry,
    That does help a bit but still still doesn't address the core of my problem, which is what to do when things don't go as advertised, which is inevitable in any piece of software. I'm not doing any model creation in LumenRT, I'm just exporting from CityEngine but the process involved, and the end result, can vary quite a bit depending on the situation.

    I'd love to talk with you further one on one if possible as I'm not really here to bash the product, I just need to have a dependable level of consistency or a reliable process to get questions answered if I'm going to continue to make it a core piece of my workflow. With e-on, the former wasn't always the case but usually the latter would come through if it really mattered.

    Scott
Reply
  • Jerry,
    That does help a bit but still still doesn't address the core of my problem, which is what to do when things don't go as advertised, which is inevitable in any piece of software. I'm not doing any model creation in LumenRT, I'm just exporting from CityEngine but the process involved, and the end result, can vary quite a bit depending on the situation.

    I'd love to talk with you further one on one if possible as I'm not really here to bash the product, I just need to have a dependable level of consistency or a reliable process to get questions answered if I'm going to continue to make it a core piece of my workflow. With e-on, the former wasn't always the case but usually the latter would come through if it really mattered.

    Scott
Children
No Data