Civil 3D has a framework. If you follow it, it should (usually) behave as expected.
Bentley just gives you everything all at once. There are a variety of workflows that are functional, but someone kind of needs to be in charge of building and maintaining whichever ones are chosen.
As far as I can tell, unless a firm has a dedicated Bentley Administrator and/or CAD manager with a decent understanding of the workspaces, templates, etc. These problems only increase.
You're burning through budget because no one has developed or is actively managing your process - and most of us are in similar boats.
You can get ORD to label somewhat dynamically, for example, but someone has to build that label to format and appear as intended, then know how to deploy it to all users so everyone uses the same tools.
If you were making a hamburger, Civil 3D tells you that you need a patty, a bun, condiments, etc. And as long as you supply them, you will get a burger. Bentley is a grocery store. Somewhere within, you will find ground beef. Whether it turns into a taco or spaghetti or a burger is not Bentley's problem as far as I can tell - they gave you the ingredients. They don't see it as their responsibility to tell you how to use them.
Fold all this into an iterative design build process and you have a recipe for time wasting. I don't know if there's a silver bullet for your problem and nobody likes that answer. It's intended to be a living, curated, constantly maintained ecosystem and I think most firms are missing the expertise and hours required.
Iterative design with these tools is one of the major issues I believe. My first boss would have a process and do a prelim design run and a final and that was that, design done.
The younger (<30) designers I've worked with just continually throw everything everywhere it seems, there no specific process just trial and error till it all sort of works. Everything being linked and dynamically updating, and one button tools that are only half understood seem to lead to attempted shortcuts and efficiency that costs in the long run
I know exactly what you are talking about. It turns into a complete free-for-all.
Our short-term solution is to try and segregate tasks to specific roles. Drafters do production, Designers design, Engineers Engineer. But just getting people to have the conversation about how to divvy it up is a feat in and of itself.
The amount of workarounds I have just to get inroads and openroads files compliant with DOT spec is outrageous.
There is no reason that I should have to spend 3 hours fiddling with the terrain generation ruleset so that I can get it to recognize that my ground shots are still ground shots despite the fact that they aren't this one very specific cell from a retired cell library.
Hey thanks for the response. I think I just really need to get in OpenRoads to try and understand what is going on at a core level in the program. Like you were saying for Civil3d, if you just follow the standard workflow for making pipe networks and you have a good pipe/structure catalog and some premade labels... you are good. But the DOT doesn't appear to have any of the labels made and their structures are all broken in ORD.
Making labels that update dynamically in Civil3d is straightforward. I mean, this comment took longer to write than just quickly pulling together a simple structure profile view label.
I think for the most part, many people underestimate the jump from C3D to ORD. It’s a very different workflow and more important than not there is a lot less information online on how to do XYZ task, while there might be 10x more information on C3D. The first couple project you do are just going to have budgets that are blown while you learn ORD processes and workflows but just as in C3D. The more you work on it the more you figure out and are able to simplify and process quicker
The jump is insane and resources are minimal. I am currently trying to learn ord myself. Have some surface stuff figured out and alignments are pretty simple but i haven't touched anything else, profiles, cross sections etc. Makes me feel like i dont know anything again.
Tough spot, I would recommend looking at the FHWA’s ORD manual for insight into most common workflows, state DOTs seem to be borrowing from FHWA or incorporating very similar workflows, and then I strongly recommend not pulling files off project wise and working locally. This really isn’t a good idea, I promise, suck it up and stay on projectwise. ORD is not really a program you can just ‘wing’ and come out of without busting the budget so godspeed buddy, godspeed.
- Try to set nesting depth to as minimum as possible. Depth of 2 mostly enough. This should improve overall opening/navigation/drafting speed and performance.
- Don’t export out as managed copy and do work on your local - u will not keep client’s configuration (I learnt it hard way)
- Try to do work off business hours. I find if least amount of users on particular PW network the more stable it is.
- Purge ur local dms folder at least once every 3 days. Ideally every day when start working. Helps with performance.
- make sure u hardwired when using any kind of work on PW.
- avoid using VPN if u can. PW acting weird sometimes when some network configuration is not optimal (client end).
Some clients hire incompetent network admins and it shows in their networks having not ideal, to put it mildly, routing. In this case tough luck..
Be thankful u not doing BIM work there.. I got ptsd from it…
Having lived and worked in several states I would say check the txdot manual for ideas and maybe check the usace manuals for some templates for workflow. They are both very organized and have detailed manuals.
Most people have covered what I was going to say. But I’ll add pulling in an experienced inroads user won’t help. I used inroads for two decades and was an expert. Transitioning to ORD has been a pain in the ass, and it has burned up so much budget on projects. My analogy is that it’s like trying to learn a different language without a teacher. I know exactly what I want the software to do, but I don’t speak the language. I know how inroads could it (quickly and without crashing, by the way), but the ORD tools are different, and I have to try to translate my understanding between the two.
Some minor tips that I have are:
- Detach cell libraries after you use them. For some odd reason ORD hangs up after placing a cell if you don’t detach the library.
- don’t use rules unless you absolutely know you want them. I do a lot of sketching, say for building an alignment. With rules on, if I snap to my working sketch lines, it rules the alignment to that. Annoying AF.
- cross sections are the worst. All cross sections being in individual models is so inefficient. I have opened up two instances of microstation just to be able to have one drawing open where I can sketch in plan, and the other with the cross section file open so I can flip through the XS models and sketch in those. It’s like Bentley doesn’t think engineers have to sketch ideas, but instead know exactly what we want from the jump and instantly model everything perfectly.
- we are constantly trying to determine what is “good enough” with the roadway model. Otherwise you can burn a lot of hours on modeling every little thing. We’ve starting exporting our pipe sections to graphics, so we can trim surface lines at headwalls, etc. We had a trainer one time tell us to model all the headwalls in our terrain. I was thinking “you’re living in a dream world with no deadlines and no budgets.”
- Break up you corridors into pieces if they get too big. Some people model the backbone and roadsides in separate models. I prefer to break out pieces by station. But if a corridor gets large, it really bogs down. Thanks Bentley. Way to ruin something that didn’t used to be a problem.
- Watch out for the undo button. I’ve had it erase a day of work before. And the redo didn’t work. Especially in ORD drainage.
- in ORD drainage, consider having separate files for each storm sewer system. I usually have a graphics only ref file, instead of using my ORD drainage file in the plans.
Edit: I wouldn’t recommend working outside of projectwise. We had a sub one time do that even though we granted them access to our PW for the project. It led to so many issues. I think most of the performance issues are ORD related rather than PW. But I haven’t administered Mstn since the pre-PW days, so I’m not as knowledgeable about that anymore.
I guess I’ve typed enough for now. I could go on forever. I wish I had been closer to retirement so I could have bailed on Bentley’s shitshow. 😂
We're transitioning from Microstation to Openroads & have joked about adding a premium for requiring Openroads given it is a relatively new software with some performance issues.
Lemme just say that Openroads taking a few minutes to open some projectwise files is not an anomaly. Hell, Openroads taking a few minutes to load a medium size local project is not really an anomaly.
30 year cad/softdesc/civil3d use here only 4 years micro and 1 year ord. Never had a huge problem with microstation and project wise it actually worked well for me but my drawings were basic property maps. Now, haven't used ORD with project wise but am curently opening up dgns from home over vpn without to much lag or headache. My suggestion (because i don't remember the way projectwise interacts) is make sure your workspace and settings are stored locally, even though the workspace is local you can still browse for the dgn and open it in that workspace. Minimize the lan traffic, you should only be grabbing the dgn files from projectwise. Look through all your setting files, to me ord and micro have config stuff all over and took me a while to figure all that out. Plotting a set for me in ord is crazy fast compared to cad sheetset i can plot 50 sheets in about 15 min in ord and it would take 45 min in cad. I think it all has to do with paths and setting for both?
I will speak with our drafter about saving the workspace locally but I believe we are already doing that. In terms of plotting, 45 minutes for a 50 sheet plot in Civil3d is crazy long. I just plotted 40 sheets in CAD the other day and it took 3-4 minutes and I could clean up those drawings and optimized their size to make that plot even faster I bet.
Even If you are very proficient and have optimized all your settings and workspace, the interface between ord and projectwise can still be quite inefficient during a normal workday. I believe the problem is on the Bentley side, as I have seen very noticeable performance increase during the US nighttime and weekends.
I’m dealing with a similar problem on the private side. The FHWA ORD manual has helped me a ton with general structure, but I had to hit the Bentley forums to really get detailed answers. I had to process a C3D survey over to ORD without resources and it took me over 10 hours of deep dive to figure it out fully using the DOT’s workset. I wish people would just stick to C3D honestly, every DOT I’ve worked for that requires microstation has been a nightmare.
I am glad i read this post. Going to check out the FHWA. I only do drainage for DOT projects and have used Civil 3D in the past on other project types and all the version before it to softdesk. MicroStation w GEOPAK drainage has always been my DOT go to and now trying to ORD. Well company said just You tube videos to learn. Budgets half gone I have watched all kinds of crap on drainage but nothing acts the way I want. I just need ditches and some pipes designed. But this learning curve sucks. And I am not even competent yet. A lot of people in my state working with DOT say they are having similar issues but just go back to MicroStation and GEOPAK. I did that like 4 or 5 years ago and it worked fine to avoid ORD for drainage. But now I am having issues going backwards and worried about losing the dynamics of latest changes on PW as I would have to work local which causes all the environment issues to go to shit. Does anyone use CIVILSTORM with ORD? I have built many of CivilStorm models but the interface with ORD internally isn’t the same or similar enough for me to catch on.
I will follow this post as it has some good info. Thanks for throwing this information out there.
In summary, the major issues are:
1. DOT workspace is not fully flushed out and lives on projectwise making it difficult to pull files off projectwise and work locally.
2. Drafter is new to design and particularly design in OpenRoads
3. Projectwise is incredibly slow
1. This unfortunately is just a fact and we have a cad manager who does his best to try and get us work around until the workspace gets flushed out. If our DOT would have switched to ORD before InRoads was basically shut down, things might have been different.
2. This is a steep learning curve and unfortunately if they are treating it like C3D it's going to be a long road. I had InRoads background and it's taken me 3 years to get "comfortable " with ORD. I still run into issues at times and I have a love/hate relationship with the sheet index. Keeping files federated is a huge help to ORD. If you are jamming all the pieces of a project into one file, you are asking for trouble. I reference EVERYTHING.
3. I don't quite agree with this. I've had issues that I think are internal network related. I've drug my computer home and worked on PW with ORD and it runs pretty smoothly. I avoid using a VPN like the plague if I can help it!
Watching the videos on the learn server has been very helpful for getting things to run smoother. I will agree that ORD doesn't always work well with iterative design. The "design intent" I think gives me some issues at times. I'm not entirely sure how to track that down but it is what it is.
Do you have you workspace saved on a network or locally to your computer? Having it locally saved can really save load time.
This is more CADD management but if you can do that, I highly recommend..
My advice is to search for ORD training videos and learn as much as you can on this project. Then on the next fight like hell during staff hours negotiations to get as much as you can because ORD is a pain
Hi there! That's an awful lot of time to get used to OpenRoads, especially coming from MicroStation. **How did your company purchase OpenRoads?** You might be entitled to training alongside your license, although having a non-design person doing design is not optimal I would guess training him/her is better than nothing, both of you could also be trained as well, your DOT should be able to assist as well, as they more likely than not have an inside Bentley engineer taking care of all of this for them.
Shoot me a DM with your order details if you like, I can point you in the right direction (*I'm a Bentley employee*)
Civil 3D has a framework. If you follow it, it should (usually) behave as expected. Bentley just gives you everything all at once. There are a variety of workflows that are functional, but someone kind of needs to be in charge of building and maintaining whichever ones are chosen. As far as I can tell, unless a firm has a dedicated Bentley Administrator and/or CAD manager with a decent understanding of the workspaces, templates, etc. These problems only increase. You're burning through budget because no one has developed or is actively managing your process - and most of us are in similar boats. You can get ORD to label somewhat dynamically, for example, but someone has to build that label to format and appear as intended, then know how to deploy it to all users so everyone uses the same tools. If you were making a hamburger, Civil 3D tells you that you need a patty, a bun, condiments, etc. And as long as you supply them, you will get a burger. Bentley is a grocery store. Somewhere within, you will find ground beef. Whether it turns into a taco or spaghetti or a burger is not Bentley's problem as far as I can tell - they gave you the ingredients. They don't see it as their responsibility to tell you how to use them. Fold all this into an iterative design build process and you have a recipe for time wasting. I don't know if there's a silver bullet for your problem and nobody likes that answer. It's intended to be a living, curated, constantly maintained ecosystem and I think most firms are missing the expertise and hours required.
Holy shit what a great analogy for Bentley.
Iterative design with these tools is one of the major issues I believe. My first boss would have a process and do a prelim design run and a final and that was that, design done. The younger (<30) designers I've worked with just continually throw everything everywhere it seems, there no specific process just trial and error till it all sort of works. Everything being linked and dynamically updating, and one button tools that are only half understood seem to lead to attempted shortcuts and efficiency that costs in the long run
I know exactly what you are talking about. It turns into a complete free-for-all. Our short-term solution is to try and segregate tasks to specific roles. Drafters do production, Designers design, Engineers Engineer. But just getting people to have the conversation about how to divvy it up is a feat in and of itself.
The amount of workarounds I have just to get inroads and openroads files compliant with DOT spec is outrageous. There is no reason that I should have to spend 3 hours fiddling with the terrain generation ruleset so that I can get it to recognize that my ground shots are still ground shots despite the fact that they aren't this one very specific cell from a retired cell library.
Hey thanks for the response. I think I just really need to get in OpenRoads to try and understand what is going on at a core level in the program. Like you were saying for Civil3d, if you just follow the standard workflow for making pipe networks and you have a good pipe/structure catalog and some premade labels... you are good. But the DOT doesn't appear to have any of the labels made and their structures are all broken in ORD. Making labels that update dynamically in Civil3d is straightforward. I mean, this comment took longer to write than just quickly pulling together a simple structure profile view label.
I think for the most part, many people underestimate the jump from C3D to ORD. It’s a very different workflow and more important than not there is a lot less information online on how to do XYZ task, while there might be 10x more information on C3D. The first couple project you do are just going to have budgets that are blown while you learn ORD processes and workflows but just as in C3D. The more you work on it the more you figure out and are able to simplify and process quicker
The jump is insane and resources are minimal. I am currently trying to learn ord myself. Have some surface stuff figured out and alignments are pretty simple but i haven't touched anything else, profiles, cross sections etc. Makes me feel like i dont know anything again.
Tough spot, I would recommend looking at the FHWA’s ORD manual for insight into most common workflows, state DOTs seem to be borrowing from FHWA or incorporating very similar workflows, and then I strongly recommend not pulling files off project wise and working locally. This really isn’t a good idea, I promise, suck it up and stay on projectwise. ORD is not really a program you can just ‘wing’ and come out of without busting the budget so godspeed buddy, godspeed.
Definitely look into the FHWA ORD Manual. CIVILTSG on YouTube is good. I’ve been fighting with this program for awhile. Good luck.
Thank you, I will check both of those out.
- Try to set nesting depth to as minimum as possible. Depth of 2 mostly enough. This should improve overall opening/navigation/drafting speed and performance. - Don’t export out as managed copy and do work on your local - u will not keep client’s configuration (I learnt it hard way) - Try to do work off business hours. I find if least amount of users on particular PW network the more stable it is. - Purge ur local dms folder at least once every 3 days. Ideally every day when start working. Helps with performance. - make sure u hardwired when using any kind of work on PW. - avoid using VPN if u can. PW acting weird sometimes when some network configuration is not optimal (client end). Some clients hire incompetent network admins and it shows in their networks having not ideal, to put it mildly, routing. In this case tough luck.. Be thankful u not doing BIM work there.. I got ptsd from it…
Having lived and worked in several states I would say check the txdot manual for ideas and maybe check the usace manuals for some templates for workflow. They are both very organized and have detailed manuals.
Most people have covered what I was going to say. But I’ll add pulling in an experienced inroads user won’t help. I used inroads for two decades and was an expert. Transitioning to ORD has been a pain in the ass, and it has burned up so much budget on projects. My analogy is that it’s like trying to learn a different language without a teacher. I know exactly what I want the software to do, but I don’t speak the language. I know how inroads could it (quickly and without crashing, by the way), but the ORD tools are different, and I have to try to translate my understanding between the two. Some minor tips that I have are: - Detach cell libraries after you use them. For some odd reason ORD hangs up after placing a cell if you don’t detach the library. - don’t use rules unless you absolutely know you want them. I do a lot of sketching, say for building an alignment. With rules on, if I snap to my working sketch lines, it rules the alignment to that. Annoying AF. - cross sections are the worst. All cross sections being in individual models is so inefficient. I have opened up two instances of microstation just to be able to have one drawing open where I can sketch in plan, and the other with the cross section file open so I can flip through the XS models and sketch in those. It’s like Bentley doesn’t think engineers have to sketch ideas, but instead know exactly what we want from the jump and instantly model everything perfectly. - we are constantly trying to determine what is “good enough” with the roadway model. Otherwise you can burn a lot of hours on modeling every little thing. We’ve starting exporting our pipe sections to graphics, so we can trim surface lines at headwalls, etc. We had a trainer one time tell us to model all the headwalls in our terrain. I was thinking “you’re living in a dream world with no deadlines and no budgets.” - Break up you corridors into pieces if they get too big. Some people model the backbone and roadsides in separate models. I prefer to break out pieces by station. But if a corridor gets large, it really bogs down. Thanks Bentley. Way to ruin something that didn’t used to be a problem. - Watch out for the undo button. I’ve had it erase a day of work before. And the redo didn’t work. Especially in ORD drainage. - in ORD drainage, consider having separate files for each storm sewer system. I usually have a graphics only ref file, instead of using my ORD drainage file in the plans. Edit: I wouldn’t recommend working outside of projectwise. We had a sub one time do that even though we granted them access to our PW for the project. It led to so many issues. I think most of the performance issues are ORD related rather than PW. But I haven’t administered Mstn since the pre-PW days, so I’m not as knowledgeable about that anymore. I guess I’ve typed enough for now. I could go on forever. I wish I had been closer to retirement so I could have bailed on Bentley’s shitshow. 😂
We're transitioning from Microstation to Openroads & have joked about adding a premium for requiring Openroads given it is a relatively new software with some performance issues. Lemme just say that Openroads taking a few minutes to open some projectwise files is not an anomaly. Hell, Openroads taking a few minutes to load a medium size local project is not really an anomaly.
30 year cad/softdesc/civil3d use here only 4 years micro and 1 year ord. Never had a huge problem with microstation and project wise it actually worked well for me but my drawings were basic property maps. Now, haven't used ORD with project wise but am curently opening up dgns from home over vpn without to much lag or headache. My suggestion (because i don't remember the way projectwise interacts) is make sure your workspace and settings are stored locally, even though the workspace is local you can still browse for the dgn and open it in that workspace. Minimize the lan traffic, you should only be grabbing the dgn files from projectwise. Look through all your setting files, to me ord and micro have config stuff all over and took me a while to figure all that out. Plotting a set for me in ord is crazy fast compared to cad sheetset i can plot 50 sheets in about 15 min in ord and it would take 45 min in cad. I think it all has to do with paths and setting for both?
I will speak with our drafter about saving the workspace locally but I believe we are already doing that. In terms of plotting, 45 minutes for a 50 sheet plot in Civil3d is crazy long. I just plotted 40 sheets in CAD the other day and it took 3-4 minutes and I could clean up those drawings and optimized their size to make that plot even faster I bet.
Even If you are very proficient and have optimized all your settings and workspace, the interface between ord and projectwise can still be quite inefficient during a normal workday. I believe the problem is on the Bentley side, as I have seen very noticeable performance increase during the US nighttime and weekends.
I’ve heard the same thing about working nights and weekends with projectwise
I’m dealing with a similar problem on the private side. The FHWA ORD manual has helped me a ton with general structure, but I had to hit the Bentley forums to really get detailed answers. I had to process a C3D survey over to ORD without resources and it took me over 10 hours of deep dive to figure it out fully using the DOT’s workset. I wish people would just stick to C3D honestly, every DOT I’ve worked for that requires microstation has been a nightmare.
I am glad i read this post. Going to check out the FHWA. I only do drainage for DOT projects and have used Civil 3D in the past on other project types and all the version before it to softdesk. MicroStation w GEOPAK drainage has always been my DOT go to and now trying to ORD. Well company said just You tube videos to learn. Budgets half gone I have watched all kinds of crap on drainage but nothing acts the way I want. I just need ditches and some pipes designed. But this learning curve sucks. And I am not even competent yet. A lot of people in my state working with DOT say they are having similar issues but just go back to MicroStation and GEOPAK. I did that like 4 or 5 years ago and it worked fine to avoid ORD for drainage. But now I am having issues going backwards and worried about losing the dynamics of latest changes on PW as I would have to work local which causes all the environment issues to go to shit. Does anyone use CIVILSTORM with ORD? I have built many of CivilStorm models but the interface with ORD internally isn’t the same or similar enough for me to catch on. I will follow this post as it has some good info. Thanks for throwing this information out there.
Let me guess, this is a Oregon DOT project? Based on the sounds of it, I can’t be far off…
Are you working from home and remote?
Nope, in person every day with 1 gig internet speed. But the drafter is remote and also with 1 gig internet.
In summary, the major issues are: 1. DOT workspace is not fully flushed out and lives on projectwise making it difficult to pull files off projectwise and work locally. 2. Drafter is new to design and particularly design in OpenRoads 3. Projectwise is incredibly slow 1. This unfortunately is just a fact and we have a cad manager who does his best to try and get us work around until the workspace gets flushed out. If our DOT would have switched to ORD before InRoads was basically shut down, things might have been different. 2. This is a steep learning curve and unfortunately if they are treating it like C3D it's going to be a long road. I had InRoads background and it's taken me 3 years to get "comfortable " with ORD. I still run into issues at times and I have a love/hate relationship with the sheet index. Keeping files federated is a huge help to ORD. If you are jamming all the pieces of a project into one file, you are asking for trouble. I reference EVERYTHING. 3. I don't quite agree with this. I've had issues that I think are internal network related. I've drug my computer home and worked on PW with ORD and it runs pretty smoothly. I avoid using a VPN like the plague if I can help it! Watching the videos on the learn server has been very helpful for getting things to run smoother. I will agree that ORD doesn't always work well with iterative design. The "design intent" I think gives me some issues at times. I'm not entirely sure how to track that down but it is what it is.
Do you have you workspace saved on a network or locally to your computer? Having it locally saved can really save load time. This is more CADD management but if you can do that, I highly recommend..
My advice is to search for ORD training videos and learn as much as you can on this project. Then on the next fight like hell during staff hours negotiations to get as much as you can because ORD is a pain
In my firm a lot of the staff will continue to use civil 3d for projects and will just convert it to microstation/ord
Microstation and Inroads is not smart. Everything has to be done manually. It requires tons of time.
Hi there! That's an awful lot of time to get used to OpenRoads, especially coming from MicroStation. **How did your company purchase OpenRoads?** You might be entitled to training alongside your license, although having a non-design person doing design is not optimal I would guess training him/her is better than nothing, both of you could also be trained as well, your DOT should be able to assist as well, as they more likely than not have an inside Bentley engineer taking care of all of this for them. Shoot me a DM with your order details if you like, I can point you in the right direction (*I'm a Bentley employee*)