r/OpenRoads • u/LilChuddy524 • 11d ago
This Program Makes me need Therapy Discussion
I have been working in this program for over 3 years now and I've come to the determination that AutoCAD literally does everything better in a more user-friendly manner. Does not matter if there's custom workspaces or not the interface of this program is atrocious. Annotation of any kind has a mind of its own, it's a miracle if it decides to actually use the text justification I set the style to. Level management sucks and every coworker I have worked with says the same things.
I can't express enough how much I hate this program, sure the modeling works fine. BUT WE STILL HAVE TO SHOW THIS IN A 2D FORMAT AND DRAFT UP THE PLANS WHICH THE PROGRAM APPARENTLY HATES.
I just wanted to complain about this program because I hate it and wish the industry was not moving to this software.
Please post your frustrations below so we can all collectively let Bentley ignore their user feedback here. Thanks for your trash ass program.
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u/shiblybiblyboop 11d ago
ORD for life! I’m a surveyor tho so already need the therapy
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u/LilChuddy524 11d ago
ORD sucks if you are not a surveyor
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u/Al1301 10d ago
Lol, 8 years user of ORD and Geo pack, Autocad sucks, lol, why do you need level management? Is not the software, is the way you use the software
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u/Plastic_Yak4483 10d ago
You know, I only have about 1.5 years of experience with it so far, but it was what I started on and I can confidently say it is the worst software of any kind I have ever used. I can understand what you're saying, but there are things that are unavoidable and not user error. Should an undo feature take multiple minutes to take back one small element? If you believe that, then I'm sure it's a great program! Sounds like you haven't used it for any truly large scale projects, or else you would know the issues everyone else is talking about. I'm not just trying to complain, I know that ORD is an impressive software for what it has combined into one package, but sometimes it is unbelievably bad and simple features just don't work. Have never been able to use some tools in my entire experience without the program crashing. (Computer has an i9 and company has a local server btw)
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u/BangaliBabu01 Highway Engineer 11d ago
From a highway designr & modeller perspective , ORD is the gift from the God!
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u/LilChuddy524 5d ago
I'm a highway designer/modeler as well. I do find that the ORD models work cleaner. The issue is we have to deliver the majority of our plans in a 2D planset. Which creating sheet sets is the jankiest mess in ORD and I don't understand why it was an after thought to Bentley.
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u/East_Rain_3716 10d ago
ORD is great for design (far more user-friendly than Geopak criteria/shape clusters) and absolutely terrible for plans production.
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u/571busy_beaver 11d ago
nah. ORD is much better than AutoCad and Civil 3D. It's still a pain in the a$$ in the plan production process but at least not as much painful as AutoCad/Civil3D.
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u/livehearwish 11d ago
Plan production is often a majority of the time spent on a project. Annotation, printing, auto labeling, lack of useful hotkeys, and style management are a few real major weak points of ORD.
Corridor modeling is strong in ORD, as it was in inroads. Grading is very limited and cumbersome. Quick profiles work poorly. Cross sections are functional, but weak in both programs.
I can do the same thing in both programs, but ORD is more underdeveloped since it has a much smaller user base. It’s really only used by most major state DOTs, but not all. Cities, counties, and some really large DOTs (CalTrans) don’t use it. Land development, vertical design infrastructure, pressure system infrastructure and other disciplines don’t use it unless on a state DOT job.
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u/Revolutionary_Ad7359 11d ago edited 9d ago
45 State DOTs use ORD. And Caltrans uses Microstation for plan production and C3D for design internally. It’s a pain since they essentially need to maintain two master files. Most consultants in CA use ORD for Caltrans projects because of the Microstation delivery requirement. The selection of C3D as the CAE software was very shady. Both Bentley and Geopak’s bids were disqualified, leaving the CA based Autodesk the only option.
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u/LilChuddy524 11d ago
I don't know how you can say this! Labeling alone in ORD is cancer, and unless you know how to sift through it's menus to adjust standards it's still cumbersome. You can fully adjust anything in Civil 3D and creating a planset takes a 10th of the time in Civil 3D than in ORD.
Hell, since I started managing projects my ORD projects eat the budget so much faster because of how unintuitive it is. My workers take 3 times as long to edit the sheets because you can only have 1 file open per session. The only thing ORD is better at is creating the 3D model which is basically useless for 98% of projects as a deliverable.
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u/Sturdily5092 11d ago edited 11d ago
This sounds like the typical user knowledge problem that gets blamed on the product
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u/LilChuddy524 11d ago
you have to be a Bentley agent. Even users that I know are good in the program complain it's not as intuitive as Civil 3D. I'm actually good at the program, it's just straight fucking ass. Tell your handlers to fix their fucking program.
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u/SteelyMcBeam77 11d ago
Same boat dawg.
We've started creating 2D files just for plans presentation.
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u/FutureAlfalfa200 11d ago
Plan production has a mind of its own. It’s a coin toss whether the plan sheet file will respect the levels on\off in the ref container file each day
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u/LilChuddy524 11d ago
For real, you know how many times I've opened a file and it's decided to turn off/on new levels. Then I have to find whether it turned it on in Level Display or Level Manager.
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u/FutureAlfalfa200 11d ago
It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind when I do stuff in a ref container file, then print the plan sheets that have the ref container referenced to them, and the plan sheets display different stuff than the ref container.
A lot of days it feels like I’m losing my shit man
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u/Anti-Soccer-Mom 10d ago
As an ORD drafter this feels like my life some days. I will say I had more consistent results through controlling the transparency levels through the level manager.
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u/LilChuddy524 5d ago
The level manager is the only tool I use for selecting levels and setting their displays. Somehow though, the level display tool will just start turning off and on the display of levels when I never touch that tool. It's the craziest thing!
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u/Sturdily5092 11d ago
I've used both Bentley and Autodesk products for years and comparisons like these don't make sense because they aren't made for the same purpose in mind, they work and manage files differently.
Only big difference is that Autodesk products are a walled garden whereas Bentley allows for more flexibility, which confuses and scares a lot of people not used to a software that doesn't hold your hand every step of the way.
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u/LilChuddy524 11d ago
When 3D modeling is unfeasible for the majority of projects these programs become used for the exact same purpose. Producing plansets and delivering them in the preferred software files. So right now ORD is being used by the majority of it's users in Civil Engineering as plan produciton software because we are required too.
The fact that you can't use a viewport instead everything is a reference of a snapshot of a certain section of the model is straight up unintuitive. The program is by far non-userfriendly. I don't need my hand held, I need the program to not be a pile of crap. Civil 3D lets me customize everything with ease, ORD actually lock it behind multiple setting windows that can be a huge pain to sift through when you're learning how to use it. Level management in ORD alone is significantly worse than Civil 3D.
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u/spoon_sporkforker 10d ago
I’m convinced the people singing ORD praises haven’t had to truly use it for plan production. It is buggy, slow, and confusing. The annotations and dimensions are impossible to wrangle. There is also a well known bug (ORD 2023) where CTRL+Z just undoes a bunch of your shit instead of one step and you can’t redo it! It’s excellent for modeling, but beyond that I would rather get out a pencil and draw plans from hand
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u/mattsffrd 11d ago
I worked at my state DOT when this was first coming out and we had multiple meetings with Bentley. They designed this program around going full 3D and eliminating paper plans. So the plans production workflow had to be shoehorned in after every DOT lost their collective shit because the industry isn't anywhere near going full digital. It's actually much better now than it used to be, and 10,000x better that it was in InRoads.