We recently received an email with respect to an update to the Bentley Support Policy. Many people in the office took this as a discontinuation of MXRoad but it is unclear if this is the case. However, we do note that MXROAD V8i (SELECTseries 4) will have "expiring support" from 1st July 2019 https://www.bentley.com/en/desktop-applications i.e. it will be unavailable for download and that "Connect Edition" and "Open Roads" will replace MXROAD. However, a lot of our designs use input files and we are concerned that this may not be supported. Having not used Open Roads, can you advise whether input file functionality is or will be available?
Hi Richard,
OpenRoads Designer is a completely new product. There is no linemode option within it. It does not use MX Commands.
You will still be able to use MX in the future, but it won't be developed any more, and we will still be providing support for the foreseeable future.
The intention is to transition users to ORD.
I'd be happy to discuss specific requirements, if you want to drop me an email. simon.pegg@bentley.com I'd be happy to discuss with you.
Simon Pegg
Bentley Civil Support
Agree with John Keating wholly! Used MX for nearly 30 years and is a proven tool for providing designs quickly. I am currently using it for all designs on one of the UK's maintenance contracts. For our work output, we have two options, either MX or Civil3D. I've use OpenRoads before and was too cumbersome, and at that time so full of faults that I understand it was abandoned in favour of Civil3D after I had left. By the looks of it, I will finally have to jump ship and go down the Autodesk route of products!
Hi Adrian, you obviously haven't used Civil 3d before...MX is in a class of its own for string-based modeling and anyone who has ever used it knows c3d takes exponentially more time to do things vs. MX.
OpenRoads is far superior to Civil 3d (IMO) for Template-based 3d modeling. I suggest you try them all before making any judgements.
Regards,
Mark
OpenRoads Designer 2023 | Microstation 2023.2 | ProjectWise 2023
Mark,
I've tried all three and 12D, but my experience with OpenRoads hasn't been a good one, although I'm sure it's improved since I used it. Some of the functions didn't even perform correctly, extension of crossfall for example, didn't work at all. Interesting to see that you are in Sydney, it was the NWRL that I had used it on.
Likewise Civil3D and 12D have their quirks. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses, but I cannot dictate to a client/organisation which design software to use. I will adapt to whatever is required. If they want MX or Civil3D and there is no MX, then I go Civil3D, as simple as that.
Adrian.
Hi Adrian, each to their own.
An interesting fact about the Sydney environment is that OpenRoads Designer is the platform that our road authority and some of the larger consultancies are moving towards from MX. A few like us dabbled with c3d but abandoned it after finding it's shortfalls (I did spend 2 years at a council using it successfully, but it has limitations in scale so inevitably it fails on highway jobs). NWR was back in the SS3 days when OpenRoads was an "add in". It's now it's own 64-bit software package, so a lot has changed, to the point that we are delivering tender and detail designs of some of the largest road and tunnel projects in NSW in it right now.
Definitely not perfect and it has it's flaws, but something to be aware of.
Give OpenRoads Designer one last try before jumping to C3D. Its completely different to the OpenRoads Technology add-on you used before. Yes it's had it's issues and there are still some.
Interestingly, enough you can still import alignment input files into OpenRoads Designer and you can use Parametric Constraints in Corridors and Linear Templates as a text input to replicate MX Design Inputs. And these controls are far superior to C3D.
We've developed Excel formulas to convert MX input files for design offsets into parameters for ORD.
To sum up. Not perfect, not as good as MX but better than C3D IMO
Regards
Chris
AECOM Roads UK&I Digital Engineering, Design & Solutions Lead | Sector Information Management Lead
Associate Director – Digital
OpenRoads Designer 10.12 | MicroStation 2023 | ProjectWise CE 10.3.4 | ContextCapture | ProjectWise PowerShell 2023 | ProjectWise WSG API | Generative Components | OpenBridge Designer 10.12
Civil 3D 2023 | Dynamo | Navisworks Manage
PowerShell | Visual Studio | Office 365 | Power Platform | Teams | SharePoint | Visio
Speckle | BIMVision | Revizto | Solibri
I think peoples perceptions of the software are down to past experiences. OR didn't perform for that job I worked on but Civil3D was used to complete it. On the other hand you used Civil3D successfully for council work, but not major highway work.
How are you finding OR with schemes of considerable length? What length are you dividing your schemes in to? References were a problem and took an age to load, and still attempting to load after they had been removed and the drawing purged. This was a major source of crashes. I'd be interested to know if this issue has been resolved.
definitely true...
We are now limiting our corridors and the design files more for the practicalities for multiple users working on a project vs. processing as we used to with the v8i OR version. Usually 2.5km performs pretty snappy.
We did a 30km Pacific Highway project in OR SS4 (in the MX environment), but started getting out of memory errors with too much processing and corridor lengths (but still delivered the project thankfully). This issue is now redundant due to the 64-bit nature of the new standalone ORD version and many of the legacy issues, like the one you mentioned, no longer exist since the software was rebuilt in the new standalone version. There are still some minor bugs that are annoying, but nothing close to what we had in the original versions...
Hi Chris, hope you're well.
I've got more excel converters for MX than you can imagine to help automate one thing or another
You can't import whole designs though and all the intricate details you created with code. You're probably ok in that a lot of your designs are from scratch and thus simple to replicate. Some of our designs have intricacies along the whole scheme and tweaked as such to meet tight constraints. Being able to transfer alignment input files isn't good enough. We don't have the time or budgets to be converting past 'on-hold' designs or even ongoing designs which will be on site after the withdrawal of mx licences. Any design software should be forwards compatible without redesign.
I'll be interested to see why we are being given Civil3D/MX as preferred design tools, when you are using OR. I think I need to get to the bottom of this, because I don't want to pursue one route, only to be told to switch down the line.
Cheers.
Cheers Mark,
I'll bear that in mind.
I am going to give ORD another try in my own time, based on one of my schemes I'm working on. I need to bottom this out, I don't want to be pursuing Civil3D if its not going to perform as expected.
What is the cross section output like nowadays? You will probably remember when OR wasn't very friendly when selecting which features to display. Every time it processed, the 'features' never retained the same name, so was requiring manipulation every time to produce cross sections. Has this been corrected? Is it now a straightforward process?