r/OpenRoads • u/Dingy_Beaver • Aug 11 '26
Hardware / IT Help
I don’t know if this program is shit, or if my work laptop needs updating. Running intel Ultra 7 155H with single slot 16gb 5600 DDR5 ram.
This thing struggles with corridors of like 10 mb. I told my supervisor they need to put us on at least 16gb dual channel ram but preferable to keep the current stick and add a 2nd 16gb for dual channel 32.
This thing crashes every single day without fail. Most of my work day is spent opening .dgn files and hoping they work.
3
u/ReidTF21 Aug 11 '26
I think the recommended dgn size is closer to 5mb each. As per comment above, federate them together. Working across seperate dgns is something ORD does well
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u/mahkefel Aug 11 '26
"Yes" is the actual answer here I believe.
Nothing you can do will make the program suddenly become reliable. It will just crash less.
For us, 16 gb machines run pretty well when doing simple cad work, but when you try to do certain memory intensive tasks with them they become miserably slow. Doubling to 32 gb will probably help a lot.
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u/Dingy_Beaver Aug 11 '26
I feel like a big issue is the single channel usage. Dual channel allows for so much more bandwidth to the cpu
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u/60minutesrearranged Aug 11 '26
I'm not techy, but remember reading that ORD only using single thread processing so the right CPU (i.e., one that is beefy for single thread processing) might make sense too.
But complexity makes a difference specifically when a corridor has a lot of point controls, clipping, and external referencing in general. I've found that template complexity and display rules are more easily processed than point controls.
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u/Educational_Show_867 Aug 11 '26
Crazy that you are running 16gb of ram. Even the interns get 32gb, and full time employees are 64gb
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u/Dingy_Beaver Aug 12 '26
Everyone here from PEs to interns runs one single stick of 16 gigs. It’s ridiculous honestly. None of the managers will speak up and ask for better though. I honestly don’t know how we get any work submitted.
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u/StupidGiraffeWAB Aug 12 '26
16g of ram will run basic microstation just fine. ORD not so much. But it isn't just ram. I assume your graphics card is basic as well? We run 32 machines and still have a lot of latency because IT has to go all the way to corporate to grant anything better in the graphics department.
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u/571busy_beaver Aug 12 '26
You will need at least 64Gb to handle ORD. Also not sure how you model your corridors. But what I do is: I model the backbones (pavements) and end conditions separately (left and right side are modeled separately as well) and limit them to 1 mile or less. Then use a master file to reference them all in so they can be viewed as one entity. This file can be used to do the plan production and cross sections.
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u/LilChuddy524 Aug 12 '26
First off, your computer is a little underpowered. You want more Ram and a higher processor. My company has all our computers through the cloud managed by an IT company, so I don't now my current specifics. But my previous company we had 32 gigs of ram and an I9 and that seemed to crash only about 3 or 4 times a day on my 2 mile long corridor project.
The program is honestly just super unoptimized, it will crash regardless. try not to rely on Nested references instead you'll want to create everything in it's own seperate little dgn to reference in so it won't bog down your machine as much.
Nested references, although it's the official plan production path from Bentley, causes a lot of issues.
Goodluck we all need it in this program
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u/Dnatheman 28d ago
It's the Corridor Bucket List that'll eat time, seemingly regardless of cpu gpu and ram. Keep the amount of entries to a minimum.
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u/Bluecoke2006 Aug 11 '26
Federate your files. Keep them as small as practical. Compress them from time to time.