Is Open Roads suitable for site grading?

Absolutely, we have OpenSite Designer a product dedicated for this. Learn more

https://communities.bentley.com/products/road___site_design/w/road_and_site_design__wiki/42402/opensite-designer

Hi,

I believe ORD is capable to deal with all kind of grading tasks. I used it to layout parking in a densely urbanized historical area where a number of constraints was overwhelming. We had to deal with a extensive cargo apron and a runway where scale of grading was over 200000 sqm - no bigger issues with ORD. At that time I missed tools to optimize earthwork volumes but now Site Modeler is embedded so this will not be an issue anymore (Frankly, I haven' had an opportunity to test Site Layout tools in action yet.).

I agree that some more in depth training for complex grading is needed. Not just simple parking.

What I miss?

-I would love to have overlay/stripping components to work with Surface templates;

-Intersection of two terrain models as a 3D line-string;

-Static contour annotation as in Inroads v8i

-Static equivalent of Thematic View: Height (along with report of terrain areas by given elevations step - I commonly used that along with Ispoache Surface tool in v8i to report on the depth of milling/overlay)

Thanks for the reply Nico. As I mentioned, I looked at Opensite. I was hoping to get a better understanding of how grading is done in OpenRoads.

Thanks Adam. You mention Site Modeler. Is that similar to the Site Modeler that was in the old v8i products? I would like to know more about it. Do you have any links about it?

I want to revisit this topic after a couple of years have passed. Civil 3D is absolutely horrendous for site modeling and I am desperate to find a viable alternative. I have looked at OpenSite almost a year ago and found it was not developed enough to be a solution. Considering OpenRoads has had a lot more development I need to know if anyone uses it extensively for site modeling such as commercial developments with lots of non-linear grading scenarios. From what i understand, OpenRoads is corridor oriented, meaning all the projection grading is done with templates and require applying targeting, clipping and masking. Civil 3D can do that as well but it is a terribly tedious approach for site modeling.

I know civil geometry has the ability to maintain horizontal and vertical relationships. For example 2 non-parallel elements can have a vertical slope relationship between them (eg. 2% cross slope) that is dynamic to changes in the reference element. Couldn't these elements be used as breaklines in a surface model? Thus couldn't I create dynamic models using just the civil geometry elements as breaklines? For example, If I have an edge of pavement element, could I create offset elements for the curb flowline, top face and back and add them as breaklines? Could I then create transitions for the curbs such as for sidewalk ramps by modifying their profiles and they would be dynamic to changes to the pavement? This is a workflow I would like to consider. It would be superior to the grading tools we have in civil 3D.