Archive for April, 2006

Latest Toolkit additions focus on increasing quality of deliverables.

Friday, 7 April 2006

Customer-driven additions help streamline design file revision and clean-up process.

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA, USA — When Axiom first offered its eagerly-awaited MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V8 in 2003, the collection included eight applications. It has now grown to include 15 software applications.

MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V8 offers full-featured, real-world-tested solutions that increase your organization’s productivity (less time, less effort, more profit). Also, Axiom constantly expands MicroStation Productivity Toolkit’s functionality by improving existing applications and adding new ones. The most recent additions to Toolkit for V8 are Duplicate Element Remover and DgnCompare for V8. Axiom implemented the V8 versions of these V7 favorites in response to client demand.

DgnCompare
DgnCompare reports differences between similar design files (different revisions of a design file or two versions of a design file that evolved from a common “ancestor”).

DgnCompare also allows MicroStation users to:

  • Review changes made to a file from one day to the next.
  • Identify unwanted design changes and interactively delete them.
  • Identify redundant elements between a master file and its attachments.

MicroStation users can use DgnCompare to view element differences one by one (interactively) or generate detailed reports listing element differences – both text reports and graphical reports (a design file that indicates added, modified and deleted elements with user-definable symbology).

What’s more, perhaps surprisingly, Design History does not need to be activated to use DgnCompare for V8 with your V8 design files and cell libraries.

Duplicate Element Remover
Duplicate Element Remover automatically identifies and optionally removes duplicate and near duplicate elements from design files – and V8 cell libraries.

Duplicate elements are well known to most MicroStation users. They can result from “flattening” 3D designs to 2D or by merging files or accidentally copying groups of elements, among other causes. But what are “near duplicates”? What about two lines which almost exactly overlap except that they have slightly different vertices? How about two lines with identical end points – except the end points are stored in reverse order?

Duplicates and near duplicates interfere with MicroStation projects by:

  • Ruining plots.
  • Wasting your time figuring out why (duplicate) elements are still present after being deleted.
  • Slowing screen updates and other MicroStation operations.
  • Wasting disk space, slowing backups and wasting backup media.

Like DgnCompare, Duplicate Element Remover offers both detailed text reports and graphical reports (a design file that highlights duplicate elements).

These are the reasons V7 devotees demanded a V8 version of Duplicate Element Remover – so it has also been added to Toolkit for V8.

Global File Changer
Global File Changer’s true power lies in its powerful and growing set of custom commands which allow MicroStation users to accomplish complex bulk modifications that are impossible to perform otherwise.

With Global File Changer’s ever-growing list of custom commands you can do the following in multiple project files in one processing run (partial list):

  • Copy design file settings from a donor file to a set of multiple project files.
  • Modify any text attribute in all text elements or in specific text elements selected using Global File Changer’s Element Selection Utility.
  • Do any number of text search and replace combinations, on any number of files using wildcards or regular expressions.
  • Move all elements in a 3D file to a specified “Z” value.
  • Flatten 3D files.
  • Dozens of other taks.

Global File Changer’s Element Selection Utility gives MicroStation users the ability to create rules defining the elements to be modified, save and re-use those rules and utilize the saved rules to make sophisticated changes throughout any set of design files. With Global File Changer’s Element Selection Utility virtually any element attribute or set of attributes can be used to select elements in one design file or hundreds. For example, with Global File Changer’s Element Selection Utility you can specify whether a shape element is filled or not and with which color, how many vertices it has and even the length of its perimeter. You can select any symbology value or range of values. This type of fine-tuning is not possible with MicroStation’s SelectBy — and that’s just one example.

One of the huge advantages that Global File Changer owners enjoy is access to Axiom’s fast-response technical support team. If you don’t know how to make needed bulk changes to your project files, chances are Axiom Support has already helped other clients do the same thing or something similar. Just call us to benefit from our experience — at no additional charge for maintenance holders.

Learn More
We didn’t get to mention FileFixer in this article. In fact, there are 12 more applications in the V8 Toolkit and 17 more applications in the V7 Toolkit; we simply don’t have adequate space to cover them all in one issue of MicroStation Today. That’s too bad, because all of these applications are designed to help you and your colleagues complete projects in less time and with less effort. With MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, you can look forward to lower costs, more profits and evenings and weekends off.

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Former Marine — and mother of two — does eight hours of work in 60 minutes using Global File Changer.

Friday, 7 April 2006

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, USA — Some people don’t mind doing long, laborious tasks — Tammy Burgoa of Metcalf & Eddy Incorporated in San Diego, California is not one of those people. Being an industrious person, Tammy lets MicroStation Productivity Toolkit do much of her repetitive work for her, so she can focus on more important job functions. By doing so, she has the time to run two offices, make sure her two sons never get to say ‘I’m bored” and stay relaxed in sunny California.

Tammy Burgoa (inset) and her sons, Sergio (top) and Corey

We were interested in what she had to say about MicroStation Productivity Toolkit and wanted to share it with you.

MicroStation Today: Tell us a bit about yourself.
Tammy: I was in the Marines for four years where I worked as a Communications Operator and served in the Gulf War. I am a single mom of two wonderful boys and I am originally from New York. I’ve been in the CAD industry for about five years now and I work for Metcalf & Eddy Incorporated. I am the CAD manager of our San Diego and Orange County offices.

MST: What kind of projects do you work on?
Tammy: I do a lot of civil, structural, mechanical and electrical drafting and design in the water and wastewater field. I have worked on many projects with the City of San Diego, along with Caltrans (California Department of Transportation), Sprinter Rail Project with the City of Escondido and VandenBerg Air Force Base. I am currently working on a Process Wastewater Project for a Winery located in Esparta, California. The City of San Diego projects consist primarily of water, sewer and wastewater projects. I use Axiom FileFixer religiously for all files — and the City requires it — and it has actually saved me many hours of work and, in turn, has saved my company thousands of dollars.

MST: What other Axiom Products do you use?
Tammy: I have MicroStation Productivity Toolkit and use many of the utilities in it. I use SpecChecker, which helps me find errors according to my project’s standards and allows me to submit my project error-free, which makes my clients very happy. I recently began using SpecMonitor, which allows me to begin a project, using specific standards and rules, and know that the project will be on-standard when it is complete. This has saved my company time and money and will definitely save us a lot more in the future with its continued use on new projects. Also, RefManager and CellManager have saved many man-hours and thousands of dollars since the change from MicroStation J to V8.

The Axiom tech support consultants have always been very helpful in answering and solving any problems that I have encountered in the past.

MST: What kind of problems has Toolkit saved you from?
Tammy: Well, one particular problem that I remember running into back in the summer of 2005 was an issue with the Metropolitan Biosolids Center Project for the City of San Diego. I upgraded from MicroStation V7 to V8 in the middle of the project and had to change from International Feet to Survey Feet. The working unit change caused the proposed work on my drawings to be off by 12 feet. I was able to quickly fix the problem with the push of one button with Global File Changer and solved the problem in one hour verses eight hours. It was only 30 drawings, but imagine if it were more? Someone had even explained to me prior how to fix the problem the long way, which would have had me recreating each drawing all over again by re-referencing and merging files into each drawing, which would have taken me at least eight hours to do.

MST: Where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world?
Tammy: If I could go anywhere in the world right now, it would have to be back to where my ancestors came from — Sicily, Italy. My boys would probably just want to go somewhere where there’s either a lot of snow for snowboarding or big waves for surfing.

MST: What kinds of activities do you and your family like to do in California?
Tammy: I love California because of the weather, but I miss New York because my entire family still resides there. I enjoy boxing and kickboxing, softball, rollerblading and taking my boys camping, hiking, snowboarding and to the desert.

My oldest son, Corey, is 14, plays guitar and loves to snowboard, surf and skateboard. Sergio is nine. He plays the drums and loves to swim, wakeboard, snowboard and has a purple belt in karate.

MST: Thank you so much for your time, Tammy.
Tammy: Thank you so much for yours.

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New GEOPAK e-learning courses cover entire road design process.

Friday, 7 April 2006

Unique GEOPAK learning system provides self-paced training.

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA, USA — Axiom announces the release of the GEOPAK* Intermediate Road Library.

Sample lesson from the Plan Quantities GEOPAK course.

The newest edition in the GEOPAK series of Axiom’s e-learning solutions, GEOPAK Intermediate Road Library, is the complete training library that trains new roadway designers on the road design process from start to finish. In seven in-depth courses, GEOPAK Intermediate Road Library trains students on design and earthwork for roadways as well as how to create plots of their roadway designs.

Below are short descriptions of each of the courses in GEOPAK Intermediate Road Library:

Horizontal and Vertical Geometry Layout Tools: This course covers several sets of tools that compute alignments and profiles for different types of roads, from basic to complex.

Plans Preparation Tools for Road Projects: This course covers the tools needed to create construction plans as well as using GEOPAK’s Design and Computation (D&C) Manager to compute quantities. Also featured are draw transitions, plan and profile labeling, generation plan and plan/profile sheets.

Basic Proposed Cross Sections: This course works through the generation of proposed cross sections, both inside and outside of Project Manager. [Editors Note: GEOPAK Project Manager is a tool that tracks and automatically fills dialog boxes with information such as the GEOPAK coordinate geometry (COGO) job number, users, project files, working directories and various user preferences within a specific project]. This includes how to utilize all previously-created information from the design process: geometry, superelevation and existing ground sections.

Basic Earthwork: This course covers computing earthwork both inside and outside Project Manager. Includes cut/fill calculations, undercuts, unsuitable materials, review of the log file and how to interactively fix errors.

Superelevation Tools: This course focuses on how to define pavement cross slopes using several different tools. The training begins with roadways not requiring superelevation transitions, called “shapeless”, and ends with automatically calculating superelevation transitions. Sections on drawing pavement shapes and using reviewing, editing and analyzing tools are also included in this course.

Storing Graphics: This course looks at the different methods of linking graphic elements and linking back into the coordinate geometry database. This includes points, lines, curves, chains, and parcels.

Plan Quantities Utilizing GEOPAK: This course shows how to generate a list of project materials and how to compute take-off of any kind that includes such items as curbs, gutters, water and sewer pipes and lengths. Then, various examples are demonstrated on how to format the list to various types of output, depending on the needs of the user.

In each course, students will find an interactive learning environment that covers an integral part of the process of designing an entire road. Unlike a classroom, each student can progress at their own pace, ensuring they fully understand each section before moving on. What’s more, students don’t need to have a copy of GEOPAK installed to be able to learn. With GEOPAK Intermediate Road Library, students can do hands-on drills in each lesson with movies, audio and interactive multimedia presentations to simulate all phases of roadway design.

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Instantly access multiple design files in a single session of MicroStation!

Friday, 7 April 2006

Everyone has heard the phrase “Good things come in small packages”. Chocolate truffles, iPods and diamonds are all good examples. It seems that the saying also proves true with Axiom’s newest time-saving utility, DgnQuickPick.

DgnQuickPick is a MicroStation add-on that gives users immediate access to multiple project design files in a single session of MicroStation, just by clicking on a tab labeled with the file’s name. MicroStation users familiar with Mozilla’s Firefox web browser will notice the similarities between Firefox’s “tabbed browsing” feature and DgnQuickPick’s tab functionality. Users can easily select the file they need to open by simply clicking on the filename in the DgnQuickPick toolbar.

DgnQuickPick, aside from being able to give immediate access to a design file, can also be used to attach references to files, detach reference files and execute key-in commands simply by clicking on file names in the toolbar.

Make a tab for each design file in a directory to allow for quick
access from a single session of MicroStation.

Get around a MicroStation license shortage!
Many MicroStation Select members use concurrent user licensing. This means that MicroStation licenses are only available to a specific number of users at any given time. For example: if a CAD shop has a ten-seat concurrent user license, only 10 sessions of MicroStation can be open at any given time, even if three of them are running on the same workstation. When someone attempts to open an 11th session of MicroStation, they will not be able to do so. This causes time delays during projects.

DgnQuickPick helps CAD managers get around wasting valuable MicroStation licenses due to users opening multiple sessions of MicroStation on their workstations. Rather than having to open multiple sessions of MicroStation to view multiple design files, a user can open all the ones he or she wishes using DgnQuickPick and easily switch between files.

Project design files can be automatically loaded at the beginning of a DgnQuickPick session by using a File List. File lists are text files that contain full paths to specific files. By using this feature, a user can have immediate access to any frequently-used design file automatically.

Execute any key-in or macro upon opening a design file from DgnQuickPick

Master multi-tasking
Upon opening a design file from its interface, DgnQuickPick can run any MicroStation key-in command or macro on the file automatically. Through DgnQuickPick’s settings window, a MicroStation user can set up DgnQuickPick to automatically run a fit view command or a command to set the active cell library. Also, since DgnQuickPick can execute any MicroStation key-in, the “mdl load” command can be used to launch any Axiom utility automatically!

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