I know you may be bored with me complaining about OpenRoads cross-sections tools. I ve kept complaining since beta tests in 2012 or even 2011. I logged several CR regarding deffects and lacks in functionality but nothing has changed.
Now we use OpenRoads (InRoads 08.11.09.722) in real world production. Cross sections are still an industry standard and with Openroads it is a pain to cut and annotate cross-sections:
1) No update functionality: once we cut cross-sections there is no way to update the CS set. An example from today. We had our cross sections cut and annotated for 32 km long highway with existing ROW displayed. Now we proposed new ROW lines and Client asked us to update CS with new ROW - they want to have both existing and newly proposed ROW. No way to update CS with SS3 tools. With SS2 itwas a matter of a second.
2) Annotating cross-sections - for proposed road we annotate corridors feature. There is no option to filter or even sort alphabetically features to be annotated.That is a pain because there is a lot of features listed that we will not annotate (these come from civil cells, external drainage networsks, electical cables that we just display with no annotation). I wonder if any one is happy with this new annotation tools.
3) We annotate CS set in multipass process: proposed surface, subgrade,existing ground with both elevation and offset data in theframe below cross-section. Even there is an option to annotate with a single step offset and elevation for a corridor or existing terrain, we can not benefit from that becouse setting row order in frame is not working. Offset always go before elevation, even if we move it to the bottom. And there is feature description entry on the list and we can not get rid of that.
4) It happens that once existing terrain is annotated it looses its inteligence and become just a microstation graphic. sometimes it has no inteligence just after cutting cross-section set - can not be annotated.
5) Skewed Cross-Sections can not be cut with OpenRoads tools. Only linear features are cut as skewed elements - components and terrain is cut as perpendicular. Imagine how angry one can be with Bentley softwere when there is a need to cut over 50 skewed cross-sections for existing over and under passes and a few more for proposed bridges and some culverts.
6) When cutting CS there is no option to automatically include superelevation cardinal points - we have 25 superelevated curves on this 32 long highway. This is a dual carriageway and in some curves we superelevate each carriageway seperatly. I have more than 100 superelevation points, these means I need to add manually 100 stations to cut CS at.
I am still enthusiastic about OpenRoads but I feel like it is still in beta test. All time we saved with civil cells, corridor cliping, surface template we will surly waste on cross sections or civil geometry defects.
I wish one of Bentley software developers would have to use OpenRoads in real production one day and then compare experience to marketing materials.
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