Introduction

OpenRoads Designer is different in its print workflow compared to the prior software package. Using the old Microstation method will cause your machine to take an unprofitable amount of time to print your plan set. Have you ever printed a plan set once and never needed to reprint it because you forgot something? The submittal day scramble will instead become the day you call the client, “Erm, well, our plan set will have to get over to you the first thing Monday. As they say, Friday afternoon is the same as Monday morning!” That doesn’t sound fun, survivable, or high quality. I’ve read up on my state’s DOT manual and the FHWA manual to get an idea of what has to happen and why it has to happen. I’ll try to give you the core concept behind the whole new operation and a short procedure.

Core Concept

Your plans need to be printed in groups, as the Genesis account says, according to their own kinds. If all the proposed profile sheets are in one DGN, then they ought to be printed as one combined set with no present or proposed layout sheets between them. ORD takes a long while loading DGNs but prints in seconds. The software thinks: loading DGN, printing, printing, printing and so on until all sheets in the DGN are printed. If it hops to another DGN for the next successive sheet, then has to repeat the loading process. Printing the plan set in the traditional order (i.e. present, R.O.W., proposed, profile) will cause this to happen: loading DGN, printing, loading DGN, printing and take hours more to print an entire set. Printing grouped sheets according to which DGNs they are in prevents this from happening. Think of it as strain on the software. The more it has to look around, the longer it is going to take. Reducing the amount of times it has to look around will always speed up printing.

Procedure

1. Once the sheets are added to a project’s Sheet Index, select the desired sheet folders that you want to print and click on the “Open Print Organizer” button near the top of the Sheet Index Menu.
2. Save the PSET for later use and select the “Print” button.
3. In the Print dialog box, near the bottom, select the option to submit as “Separate print jobs”. This will print the sheets to individual PDFs inside a folder destination you choose. This is key to easy sheet combining once all the printing is finished as they will appear in alphabetical/numeric order according to how you named each sheet model. Choose your folder destination, select “OK”, and begin printing.
4. Once your printing has finished, you can easily sort the sheets into any order you like. In fact, if the sheet models are named correctly, they will appear in perfect alphabetical/numeric order just like a regular plan set and there will be no need to order them. Select all your sheets, right click, and select “Combine files in Revu”. You will go through the Bluebeam dialog boxes and create your plan set all without losing your mind and day! If you use another pdf editor, it will be a similar pdf combining workflow.

Conclusion

This is a brief summary of what others have worked hard in preparing in manuals. The thing is, most people don’t expect the printing to be any different than Microstation. It is entirely understandable since it looks completely identical with the same PSET and Print Organizer tools. I hope this helps you in your plan production. Trust me, I wish I knew this when I first started printing stuff.