How are civil final deliverables being developed? ORD Only or ORD w/MicroStation?

I'm asking this question to get a general idea of what others may be doing as far as the development of their final work products.  Most of our clients still require a traditional plan set (i.e. title, details, tabulation of quantities, plan, profile, cross sections, etc.) as the final deliverable mostly in PDF format BUT sometimes hardcopy.  

For those in the same situation, if you don't mind responding, are you using both MicroStation & ORD to develop these plan sets?

Thanks in Advance

Chuck

Parents
  • I haven't produced a final set of plans yet, but it seems as if OpenRoads contains all of the regular MicroStation toolset, so we will not have to back and forth between software. But we will be using "plain" MicroStation tools as well as ORD tools to produce our plan sets. ORD does a lot, but it doesn't do everything, and not every sheet in a plan set is a plan/profile/cross section.

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

Reply
  • I haven't produced a final set of plans yet, but it seems as if OpenRoads contains all of the regular MicroStation toolset, so we will not have to back and forth between software. But we will be using "plain" MicroStation tools as well as ORD tools to produce our plan sets. ORD does a lot, but it doesn't do everything, and not every sheet in a plan set is a plan/profile/cross section.

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

Children
  • MaryB,

    Thank you for responding.  So is your configuration environment setup to allow both ORD and MS access the required resources (DGNLIB's, etc..) to build a consistent plan set.  The reason I ask is because I recently encountered an issue w/MS & PD and got Bentley support involved.  When I asked about sharing the same standards.  This is the response I recieved.

    "I just confirmed because MicroStation and Open Roads Designer are separate products and not designed to work together as when are civil products were layered on top of MicroStation the ORD workspace you are getting from the client would need to be move/copy the needed files and settings to the MicroStation workspace. i.e. if you are given a level dgnlib file in the Organization-Civil folder structure, the user will need to copy the file to the MicroStation Organization folder structure.

    The Bottom line is that anything in the “Configuration\Organization-Civil\” folder structure that is needed by MicroStation needs to be moved to the “Configuration\Organization\” folder structure and you need to set your MicroStation variable _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION=D:/Network/Configuration/

    Only ORD Data that is not used by MicroStation should be in the “Configuration\Organization-Civil\” folder structure.

    If your clients are delivering the data needed by MicroStation in the “Configuration\Organization-Civil\” folder structure, then the clients are not setting up the configuration correctly. The client data used by MicroStation should actually be in a Workspace and not in the Organization folder structure. That way you can switch between different client data/standards by switching workspaces. If you use the Organization folder structure, it will get used for all clients in MicroStation."

    In our case, the client-supplied "environment" was built by Bentley... Seems kind of ODD that both or all three applications couldn't work together.

    Just my opinion.

  • In any shop I've worked at with more than one Bentley application, I have resources stored on the network. One directory for shared (cross-software) resources, with subdirectories for each specific software specific resources (say files for Geopak kept separately from the InRoads files) This way, all projects for a client could see all of the communal resources, and I could include filters based on whatever software the user had opened to "add in" the additional resources. Or I could include an extra config to be %include in the project configuration based on which program was used for the design.

    I have much the same plan here - to have a centralized network location for most of the resources, and if we need to break out special ORD directories we will.

    The reason (as far as I can intuit at this point) is that trying to run both Microstation and/or ORD on the same machine sounds like they are loaded into different directories. I only have ORD on my computer, so I can't verify this, and I'm only getting started in setting my workspaces up. I do know that when we run Microstation next to Power InRoads and Power Geopak, they each had their own installation directory, and there was no common directory between them. One of many reasons for the network setup - I had one small redirect.cfg that pointed to the network that was copied into the appropriate directories for each of the software, and then they all could be "told" to look in the same place on the network.

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

  • Folks:

    Charles, your input is most valuable here as your narrative explains exactly how I got our products to "talk" to one another consistently. Starting with the C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRoads Designer CE\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg file, I merely changed the variable MY_CIVIL_ORGANIZATION_ROOT to point to a network location; that location mimicking the file structure of the local (c:\) ORD default installation. The WorkSpaceSetup.cfg file was then copied to the MicroStation location C:\ProgramData\Bentley\MicroStation CONNECT Edition\Configuration replacing the WorkSpaceSetup.cfg file at that location.

    Doing such, both MicroStation and ORD now share the same resources, including cel libs, dgnlibs, GUI libs, etc, and just as valuable, Workspace and Workset locations. It is a simple solution to what could be a rather complex issue. We have had no issue in doing such; however, if anything comes up to change what I have written here, I will be sure to give ya'll a "heads-up", as different configurations are often quite nasty to deal with. As well, if something is apparently detrimental to such a setup, I would appreciate the input.

    Differing clients and differing client needs would certainly cause us to change a few things here. As it is, we have many clients, but only one which is specifically moving towards ORD deliverables for the time being. 

    And Mary, indeed "not every sheet in a plan set is a plan/profile/cross section." As such, MicroStation is still a valuable resource for plan production!

    Mark

    Mark Anthony Plum
    Chief Technology Officer
    1601 N.W. Expressway, Suite 400
    Oklahoma City, OK  73118
     
  • To automate this process I run a batch file after every installation of a CONNECT product. It copies two customized config files to the installed CONNECT product config folder. All CONNECT products listed in the batch file use the same config files. The files are:

    1. ConfigurationSetup.cfg

    2. WorkspaceSetup.cfg

    The destination folder depends on the installed CONNECT products. Since the COPY command doesn't copy files to a non-existent folder I can use the same batch file regardless of which CONNECT product is installed. Here is what the batch file looks like:

    @echo off
    
    :: OPENROADS DESIGNER - redirect configuration/workspace folder to network
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRoads Designer CE\Configuration"
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRoads Designer CE\Configuration"
    
    :: OPENRAIL DESIGNER - redirect configuration/workspace folder to network
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRail Designer CE\Configuration"
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRail Designer CE\Configuration"
    
    :: PROSTRUCTURES - redirect configuration/workspace folder to network
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\ProStructures CONNECT Edition\Configuration"
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\ProStructures CONNECT Edition\Configuration"
    
    :: MICROSTATION - redirect configuration/workspace folder to network
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\MicroStation CONNECT Edition\Configuration"
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\MicroStation CONNECT Edition\Configuration"
    
    :: OPENCITIES MAP - redirect configuration/workspace folder to network
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\Map CONNECT Edition\OpenCitiesMap\Configuration"
    copy /y W:\Connect_Standards\Configuration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg "C:\ProgramData\Bentley\Map CONNECT Edition\OpenCitiesMap\Configuration"

  • Thank you MaryB, Mark and Benzi for your responses.

    MaryB - I 100% agree with you.  I have always been able to configure MicroStation and any other "CAD-related" apps to a network going back to MicroStation J (Yes, I am dating myself) and never had the issues I have encountered with Connect.  So that's why I was so put-off by supports response.

    Ironically, I setup our environment pretty much as Mark described.  The only issue I had was having was periodically, both applications (MS and/or ORD) would "stall" either during the initial opening or when closing the applications, not exiting, but closing like if you were to switch from one workspace or workset to another.  That's what prompted me to contact support and hence get us where we are here today.

    Long story short:

    1. Define _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION in ConfigurationSetup.cfg to point to the network for the network configuration.
    2. Define MY_CIVIL_ORGANIZATION_ROOT in WorkSpaceSetup.cfg ( the one delivered with ORD install) to point to the network Org-Civil folder.
    3. COPY the modified ConfigurationSetup.cfg and WorkSpaceSetup.cfg to each applications respective  C:\ProgramData\Bentley\<APPLICATION>\Configuration folders on the users devices.

    This configuration has provided the best results for both the MicroStation/PowerDraft applications and ORD to share the same resources.

    Benzi - I love the idea of pushing those files to the users specific device.  I'll talk to our IT group and see if that's something that can be automated through AD or something.  If not, I'll definitely do the batch file just like you did.

    Thank you all for your responses, its greatly appreciated.  I'll keep everyone posted with any issues or observations that may impact using this deployment method.