Clearwater, Florida, USA — This time of year, many articles about New Year’s resolutions will appear. You’ll see headlines like, “How to Quit Smoking”, “How to Lose Weight” and “How to Get Out of Debt”. This article is no different.
This New Year’s resolution article is about DgnQuickPick and how it can save you time.
While I can’t promise that after reading this article you will be more confident, better looking or a snazzier dresser, I can show you a better way to quickly the design files you need to work in. With DgnQuickPick, MicroStation users can quickly and easily access any number of design files during a single session of MicroStation!
Everyday MicroStation users consume valuable production time searching for their production-related design files. Searching through a sea of drives, directories and files can take a long time. DgnQuickPick gives users immediate access to each file they need. Benjamin Rosendo of Johnson Controls, Incorporated says, “We finished transferring drawings from another facility to ours, and this involved a wide variety of updates to our documentation. DgnQuickPick helped us avoid losing time while jumping from one design file to another. It integrated into our workflow easily and helped us decrease the time spent moving from file to file by at least 40%!”
What’s DgnQuickPick?
DgnQuickPick displays design file names as tabs in a dockable toolbar. Just as the Firefox browsers shows different web pages on each tab, DgnQuickPick shows a different design file on each tab. All the user has to do is click on a tab and the design file is instantly displayed. MicroStation users have had functionality similar to this with the “Recently Used File” list in the MicroStation “File” pull down menu. DgnQuickPick, however, gives users the ability to access files other than those most recently used. Tabs can be added to the toolbar in numerous ways. A user can 1) click on an element in the active file, 2) browse and add files from directories or 3) create a list of design files in a text file.
Add multiple project files instantly!
With DgnQuickPick, users can load a list of files written in a text file using the Add Files dialog.
In previous versions, users could only create a list of files using the full file path for each file they wished to add to the DgnQuickPick toolbar. File paths like c:\axiom\sample\file1.dgn had to be written on each line of the file list. The latest version of DgnQuickPick now supports the use of configuration variables.
If a user defines a configuration variable and the variable points to specific directories, then DgnQuickPick will automatically add all the files in those directories. If the configuration variable points to specific files, then DgnQuickPick will automatically add those files.
Configuration variables in file lists allow users to add files to the tabbed list without specifying each file path.
This new feature promises to save users time. Rather than specifying individual files in their DgnQuickPick file lists, users can simply add MicroStation configuration variables, almost instantaneously adding dozens of files to their DgnQuickPick toolbar. CAD managers can use project configuration variables in their DgnQuickPick file lists to ensure that all MicroStation users — company-wide — use the same design files.
Instantly know which file is which.
DgnQuickPick uses a color-coding system to indicate characteristics of files in the toolbar. The filename of the active file always displays green, reference files attached to the active file are blue and “read-only” files are red. Tabs containing black-colored filenames are merely additional files in the list. Since DgnQuickPick continually monitors the status of the all files in a user’s toolbar, users can immediately tell when a file in their toolbar becomes “read-only”. This prevents users from mistakenly trying to edit “read-only” files.
Happy New Year!
