Using OpenRoads Designer for Production

OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition was announced by Bentley in November 2016. I'm trying to get a sense of how mature the product is for production use. I've been doing extensive research and will be moving into more rigorous testing to assess if the software can be used on full scale projects as the main design platform.

Parents
  • The 3D modeling tools are fairly solid and stable ... on the other hand plan production tools seem "half-baked" ... my major heart burn is the cross-section "deliverables" (Oh-Boy!).

    ORD creates a drawing model for EVERY station where you slice a cross section! This is how ORD keeps the connection between your 3D model and cross sections presented in the sheets LIVE.

    You could easily end up with hundreds of cross section models in your drawing (for large projects) and the processing can take hours. This has made managing ORD cross section sheets so tedious that we had no other choice but revert to revert to SS4 or other legacy formats just for the plan production ... especially cross sections, which defeats the purpose of OpenRoads Technology!

  • I've had discussions with key people in our firm who adamantly expect to be able to edit cross section graphics. They explained to me that in complex urban projects they need to make small adjustments to cross section elements and that it would be tedious and time consuming to make these tweaks using the corridor template. 

  • Absolutely! There comes a point where you will reach diminishing returns if you try to adjust the templates and model the corridor for every small adjustment - the possibility of breaking something that was working is never nil. There's always some odd section here, or some small existing condition there. Near the end of a project, when we are out of time and budget, it's much, much more efficient to make the changes in the actual drawings. I'm sure there are ways to get it all done with end condition exceptions and point controls and, and, and...but not everyone at the firm is going to be a master modeler and sometimes the work just needs to get out the door.

    ORD has no allowances for that whatsoever.

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

  • Out of curiosity, I don't get it with the Cross Sections. How can you maintain a connection between the different models to have automatically updated Cross Sections and in the same time can manually tweak them? I would guess that once you tweak something it loses its connection with the models?

  • Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the request would be to maybe keep linked Named Boundaries, but get static Drawing Production - I suppose skipping the step of exporting to a Merged DGN or DWG?

    We have that option for Meshes with the Display Clipped Graphics option when generating Quantities - Maybe an option to create Drawings as Graphics option.

    I don't know why you would need it for Profiles, but it seems to be an option that keeps being requested for Cross Sections (although I'm not one of them).

    Regards,

    Mark


    OpenRoads Designer 2023  |  Microstation 2023.2  |  ProjectWise 2023

  • In this case, why not to use a 'Clip Mask' with the reference with the option 'Merge Mask Contents' in the drawing or sheet model?

    I've just tried it and it create a mask of the area you want to edit and drop the reference in the fence into editable elements that I can manipulate / delete / etc.

  • How about having a way to "push" edits from cross sections back to the corridor model?

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

Reply Children
  • I agree.... Try an edit in section view, and if you like the result, push it back to the model. If not, discard changes/ignore and just move on. I suppose it is easier said than done to program it that way, but as the Engineer/Designer (the actual intended User of the software), the Final Plans are our product - THAT is what we get paid for by our clients.   All the fancy "dog and pony show" modeling in the world will not save you from looking bad in front of your client when the provided output has obvious problems or shortfalls..... No matter how cool it is that the 3D Model and XS's "update automatically" when you tweak some geometry.