Last year at the Year in Infrastructure Conference, Bentley Systems announced that it was bringing a new tool into its civil engineering platforms. This tool was called OpenRoads ConceptStation.
This year, at the self-same conference, OpenRoads was again a topic of much interest—but this time, it wasn’t going to be a tool in another software platform. It was going to be its very own software offering.
The software, which has now been dubbed OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition, is a multidiscipline 3D modeling application designed to make it easier for users to design roadway projects and build them, too. This will include various aspects of the design process, including surveying, geotechnical details, drainage, subsurface utilities, terrain, road, roadway furniture and more.
Designing for the Real World
One of the big announcements that Bentley made at its annual conference was that rather than working just with photogrammetry, ContextCapture would be able to combine photogrammetry captures with point cloud data to increase accuracy.
Naturally, OpenRoads Designer will take advantage of this. It will be able to incorporate reality meshes, imagery, point clouds and other geocoordinated data for engineers to build their projects in a real-world context.
Software for a New Process
Because OpenRoads Designer is intended to make the design process easier and less convoluted, it will be replacing individual software such as InRoads, GEOPAK and MX in Bentley’s lineup. Don’t worry if you use these platforms, though; Bentley has said that they will still be accessible within OpenRoads.
Talk about turning the tables.
New Features for OpenRoads Designer
So what can users expect to see?
Progressive conceptual design: one of the issues expressed by Bentley is that of the limited ability to progress information through a design-build workflow. The new software promises to move data and information through the workflow directly, so users would be able to utilize rapid conception and preliminary design strategies using reality meshes, point clouds and geographic information systems (GIS).
Multidiscipline support: yes, the software will let various disciplines work together on a project. It will also let users switch between these discipline perspectives for better comprehension.
Reality modeling tools: at the event, Carey Mann, chief marketing officer for Bentley, expressed a belief of the company’s that reality modeling is one of the big upcoming trends for the construction industry. This is reflected in the software’s convenient toolkit to incorporate and edit reality modeling data, including identifying ground-level features from reality meshes and LIDAR, point clouds and imagery.
Geotechnical tools: users will be able to access gINT geotechnical databases to pull out subsurface terrain details and incorporate them into a project to help improve grading and piling.
Subsurface utilities: users will have access to a catalog of functional utility and drainage components to model these networks. The software will also include water analysis tools to help optimize water flow.
Improved visualizations: the software is directly integrated with LumenRT, Bentley’s high-resolution visualization platform. Users will have the option of adding vegetation either individually or in bulk, imitating seasons and climates and including traffic simulation.
OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition will be available as an early access release on Dec. 1, 2016. For more information, check out the Bentley website.