Thinking of Bentley

The Bentley Continental is a great car.  Just stay away for the Bentley ORD 10.10 .  Looks good on the outside but the engine has some issues.

I have a problem with the looks. I think they tried too hard to make the Bentley ORD 10.10 look like a Mercedes. No doubt Mercedes makes good cars, but they're everywhere and are especially popular with new drivers. If I wanted a Mercedes, I would have bought a Mercedes! I probably could have bought several Mercedes for the price of my one Bentley ORD 10.10, but I didn't. No, I chose the Bentley ORD 10.10 because I hoped that despite the looks, it would have the same great handling & luxurious features of the Bentley V8. It does, kind of, but it's missing a lot from what made the Bentley V8 such a great car. Rolling down the rear windows is a good example. The Bentley V8 had a simple, reliable crank. My passenger (or their aide) could roll the window all the way up, all the way down, or anywhere in-between at any time they pleased regardless of whether the engine was running. The Bentley ORD 10.10 doesn't have a crank - can't have a crank, because Mercedes doesn't - instead, they have a huge iPad-like flat screen display near the passengers' heads that has two, and only two options: fully up, or fully down. Sometimes, but not always, rolling the window down causes the engine to stall! On the highway!

The Bentley ORD 10.10 has really put loyal Bentley V8 enthusiasts & drivers like myself in a tough spot. It's not helping that Bentley has announced that they are no longer going to manufacture replacement parts for the V8 models. A lot of the 10.10 parts aren't compatible. It's also not great that Bentley admits that these early model years are missing some features. The 2020 ORD didn't even have heated rear seats!

Wow , that is brutal.  But the truth is sometimes.  

OpenRoads Designer is a mess.  As a designer I don't know where to go with this product.  It is a nightmare to customization , the plan production workflow flat out does not work, the survey features are terrible and the modeling/ terrain tools constantly crash.  

InRoads was the best site design software on the market if you knew how to use it.  It wasn't the corridor tools that made InRoads great it was the geometry and surface tools.  I could model a finished grade on any project with InRoads.  I worked on large multiple million dollar site projects and tried to use several software packages including Civil 3d.  InRoads by far could out perform all of them.  The reason was the software created static features quickly. I could create sloped breaklines and cut/fill lines that weren't linked to anything very easily.  They were just graphics.  It was so simple to control.  wysiwyg .  I could modify elements and add elements with just Microstation tools. Breaklines could then be added to an emptied dtm through a filter or selection set.  Updates weren't dynamic like ORD but I could recreate areas of my design in half the time of ORD modeling.  Plus, updates or changes usually only occur in small areas which are easy to replace existing breaklines.  

That is my rant for the day!

I think we will see a change sometime in the near future when all of the DOT's start using ORD and find out how bad it is.

Either Bentley will step up and fix the product or agencies will start looking at other design software.

I haven't met a fresh engineering graduate that knows anything but the competitor. These new hires eventually become decision-makers. I'm sad to say that the primary make of the public fleet could change.

Even if Bentley released a new model tomorrow that satisfied most people, DOTs would not adopt it on a large scale for a year, possibly years, and users would continue to complain about the old versions. It takes a huge amount of time to develop workspaces (which will have their own countless issues), push out the new version, train users, and transition projects. It's super unfortunate that the product wasn't more refined when it was first adopted by large agencies. There was one shot, but now it's gone.

That said, ORD is growing on me as I become more confident with manipulating workspaces & macros to make it do what I want it to do. Most users aren't going to do that though.

Steven,

You are correct , with workspace modifications ORD can become manageable.  But few users understand workspaces and most workspaces are locked down in Projectwise or on a server. This eliminates any customization by users.  This is a crazy approach by Bentley , create CADD software only IT and server adimins can customize.  What if your client requires you to use their Projectwise  data source and doesn't develop or fix issues with the workspace.  Users are left with a garbage version of ORD .  Annotation doesn't work, feature definitions are missing, drawings seeds are bad etc....     Luckily some of us know configuration and can fix stuff behind the scenes.   But it is still and nightmare.  For example,  trying to fix an annotation group it is 6 steps process.  Boy I miss the xin file.  

Zane, 

There is a question regarding your post

Your text says : * It wasn't the corridor tools that made InRoads great it was the geometry and surface tools *

Corridor tools - is it something that you don't /didn't need to get your job done or is it something that you tried to use and found no satisfaction about it?

Just the opinion: there is no question around usability quickness and reliability of geometry and surface tools but roadway designer tool is doubtlessly the best tool Bentley has ever done. It looks like Denis Schaffer had the perfect picture of user needs. 

The roadway designer was a good tool.  I have at least 1000 hours running that thing.   I personally like having the corridors in the dgns the way ORD runs.  I worked on a lot of large site and interchange projects which lead me to eventually abandon the roadway corridors more or less.  Grading with the "create longitudinal features" , " create sloped feature" and " template along featrue" gave me all the tools needed to create finish grade breaklines and fast.  Probably seems crazy to a roadway designer not using corridors.

On complicated grading projects it is almost impossible to get a construction grade surface just by using corridors.  I have modeled interchanges in a matter of hours by focusing on creating finish grade breaklines.  Compared to days , setting up templates, creating point controls,  creating super diagrams, linking supers, clipping corridors, and creating terrains from corridors. Corridors are great but are very time consuming.  I am not saying all roadway projects should be modeled like this but it is something to think about.  With surfaces templates a lot of areas on projects can be modeled this way and integrated in with the roadway corridors.

The roadway designer was a good tool.  I have at least 1000 hours running that thing.   I personally like having the corridors in the dgns the way ORD runs.  I worked on a lot of large site and interchange projects which lead me to eventually abandon the roadway corridors more or less.  Grading with the "create longitudinal features" , " create sloped feature" and " template along featrue" gave me all the tools needed to create finish grade breaklines and fast.  Probably seems crazy to a roadway designer not using corridors.

On complicated grading projects it is almost impossible to get a construction grade surface just by using corridors.  I have modeled interchanges in a matter of hours by focusing on creating finish grade breaklines.  Compared to days , setting up templates, creating point controls,  creating super diagrams, linking supers, clipping corridors, and creating terrains from corridors. Corridors are great but are very time consuming.  I am not saying all roadway projects should be modeled like this but it is something to think about.  With surfaces templates a lot of areas on projects can be modeled this way and integrated in with the roadway corridors.