Across North Carolina, NCDOT‘s transition to OpenRoads Designer (ORD) is pushing civil and transportation engineering firms to retool workflows built on MicroStation. Many are approaching it in the way that feels most natural by treating OpenRoads Designer as MicroStation with new toolbars. To fill the knowledge gap, many are utilizing tutorials and public learning resources, and the results rarely live up to expectations.
A familiar starting point
A North Carolina civil and transportation engineering firm recently engaged CAD Journey after months of self-directed learning. The team was capable and their MicroStation expertise was solid. They had been working through Bentley LEARN material, YouTube tutorials, and peer knowledge to learn more about OpenRoads Designer. For isolated tasks, progress was being made, but as they moved further into projects, they had difficulties getting what they needed out of the models they had created.
The root of the issue? The right data in the wrong place.
There are a lot of nuances to working in OpenRoads Designer especially around how the 2D and 3D models work together. It was not a failure of effort. It was the first sign that ORD required a different approach.
What tutorials rarely teach
OpenRoads Designer is not a drafting environment with civil extensions. It is a rule-based design system that relies on relationships between elements, what Bentley calls “design intent”. This shift has three practical consequences that freely accessible online resources rarely surface clearly.
- The choice of seed file is a design decision, not a format decision. A 2D seed file will not let a design carry elevation information later, regardless of how carefully it is drawn.
Choosing the right starting point requires understanding what the model will be asked to do in the future. - Drawing tools and civil geometry tools produce different objects. Two lines that look identical on screen can behave very differently when anything changes. Civil geometry tools create relationships that drawing tools do not. For teams migrating from MicroStation, where drawing tools are the natural default, this distinction is easy to miss.
- Traditional MicroStation users are accustomed to working with levels. ORD relies on Feature Definitions to convey design intent. Whether an element or corridor is defined as conceptual, design, or final also changes how ORD computes important deliverables like cross-section intervals and level of detail. The wrong Feature Definition does not produce an error; it produces quietly incorrect outputs.
The deeper challenge sits above all three. OpenRoads Designer offers multiple valid paths to most outcomes. That flexibility is a feature, but for teams new to the software it can become a trap. Models built without a consistent approach become difficult to maintain, update, or hand over.
Structured training as a foundation
The engagement with the above civil engineering firm began with CAD Journey’s 3D Roadway Essentials course, a structured path through the conceptual architecture of OpenRoads Designer before its features.
- Workspace and WorkSet organization
- Civil geometry and design intent
- Template composition, corridor modelling
- Terrain modelling
The above sections were taught as connected layers rather than isolated toolsets. By the end of the course, the team had a coherent mental model of how ORD expects designs to be built. They also recognized that the course could not, by itself, give them the judgement that only comes from applying the model under real project pressure.
Where project-based sessions make all the difference
We had two follow-up sessions with the design team to address active projects. For one project, the team was designing a proposed sidewalk and curb-and-gutter alongside the existing roadway. Early in the first session, it became clear that the team’s corridor was not generating cross sections at usable intervals. After some investigation, we found that the class of a few key elements was set to conceptual, not design. The fix was a simple setting change to those elements allowing the cross sections to process as desired. Understanding the fix mattered and showcased how a single setting can have a significant impact. Without this understanding, similar issues will inevitably happen in the future.
The Outcome: A Successful Transition to OpenRoads
Firms facing the transition to OpenRoads Designer are not struggling because their engineers lack ability, they are struggling because they are hitting the ceiling of what free tutorials can teach about a rule-based, relationship-driven design environment. The optimal route to success is through structured training to build the conceptual foundation, followed by supervised project work leading into production capability.
The fastest path isn’t always the best path for learning and excelling.
The best path is the one that ends with a team that can be trusted to deliver.
Are you ready to make ORD work for your team, not against it?
Get in touch with our team to talk through your challenges and see how targeted training and hands-on guidance could help your company.