Written by:  Bob Mecham

With the release of the new OpenRoads – V8i (SELECTseries 4) Maintenance Release 1 comes a new release of MicroStation V8i (SELECTseries 3) Update 2 that is required to run with the new OpenRoads.  While the list of enhancements for the new MicroStation are not as long; there are a few enhancements that users could find beneficial.

• Color Enhancements
  • The RAL CLASSIC, RAL DESIGN, and RAL EFFECT color books have been updated in this edition
• Data Interoperability Enhancements
  • You can now open and save RealDWG 2014 files
• Format Interchange Enhancements
  • You can now import and open version 5 of Rhino 3DM files
• Geographic Coordinate System Enhancements
  • MicroStation now supports NAD83 2011 geographic coordinate system
• Point Clouds Enhancements
  •  Support for ProjectWise Point Cloud Streaming
• Visualization Enhancements
  • Effects Manager
    The Effects Manager will revolutionize the way you render complex and even simple scenes where multiple light sources are used. It eradicates the need to render multiple times if you alter any light values. You will instead render a floating point image for each light or group of lights once and then regulate their intensities in the Effects Manager. Once you have the lighting balanced using the Effects Manager, you can push these settings back to the design session for the final render and achieve the same results.
  • Irradiance Smoothing
    This setting is in the Global Illumination tree of Luxology Render Settings dialog, Advanced tab. It smooths out the blotches which can occur due to poor sampling on a surface when calculating global illumination using the irradiance cache technique.
  • Crease Threshold
    Crease Threshold is used for rendering contours with luxology. When the angle between triangles in a mesh is lower than the angle specified, then a line is drawn along that boundary.