Archive for May, 2007

FileFixer helps you understand and fix file corruption even faster.

Monday, 7 May 2007

Clearwater, Florida, USA — “When design file corruption brings your project to a halt, you don’t have time to mess around. You need the file salvaged now! You need help. The newest release of FileFixer gives you that help at a whole new level of speed and ease.

With FileFixer’s new context-sensitive help options, users can search for and retrieve the information needed to fix their corrupt MicroStation design files.

For those readers who haven’t had the pleasure of making its acquaintance, FileFixer is Axiom’s comprehensive MicroStation design file analysis and repair software. There are two versions, the original FileFixer, which specializes in analysis and repair of V7 design files (the design file format used prior to the introduction of MicroStation V8) and FileFixer for V8, which specializes in analysis and repair of MicroStation V8 design files.

The newest release of FileFixer gives you the exact technical data you need to understand what’s wrong with your MicroStation files and how to use FileFixer to get the show back on the road, fast!

Previously FileFixer created a report displaying an error number and a one-line description of each corruption it found. The new FileFixer generates a hyperlinked report that can send you to the exact user’s guide paragraph you need, speeding your full understanding of the problem, so you fix your design file that much faster. Here’s how it works: Say you’ve got a project deadline on your hands and a dead design file that FileFixer is reporting as having error “619″. [Editor's note: FileFixer for V8 reports error 619 for V8 elements which have one or more coordinates dangerously close to or outside the V8 design plane or cube.] You probably don’t have a lot of time to study up on the different forms of file corruption, because your boss wants the project done now. The great thing is there’s no research required! Just click on one of the report’s hyperlinked error numbers and a detailed explanation of that error is displayed on your screen. These new report hyperlinks provide the shortcut that power users have dreamed of and bring an unprecedented level of assistance that newcomers will immediately appreciate.

New hyperlinks in each FileFixer report take you directly to the help you need.

But that’s just the beginning of the story. Detailed, specific help like this has also been added to all of FileFixer’s settings dialog boxes such as General Settings, Search Settings, Repair Settings and so on.

Using its default settings, FileFixer can detect and repair the majority of V7 and V8 design file corruptions automatically. But, let’s face it, design file corruption is infinitely diverse. Any bit, containing “0″ or “1″, out of the millions of bits in a large design file, can potentially contain the wrong value and corrupt the file. To handle this broad range of potential corruption, MicroStation users may need to use FileFixer’s non-default search or repair settings to fully salvage a file. Each of FileFixer’s search and repair settings are thoroughly described in its user’s guide, including advice for when each setting should be used. But what’s the fastest way to find the exact search or repair setting needed to bring a corrupted file back to life?

New in the latest versions of FileFixer and FileFixer for V8, each settings dialog box now includes a help button that immediately displays the relevant section of the FileFixer user’s guide. Instant access to the precise help you need!

Install the newest V7 or V8 release of FileFixer and you will never be more than a mouse click away from the exact help you need in order to understand why a project file is misbehaving and what to do about it.

Smart CAD Managers know FileFixer is not just for emergencies. They also use FileFixer for preventative maintenance. They schedule regular searches for problems in their project files. FileFixer lets you detect and handle damaged files before they impact your projects.

Entirely new forms of file corruption have been discovered in V8 files submitted to Axiom by MicroStation users. FileFixer is the only application that can open and salvage the most severely corrupted V8 files. There is no other solution.

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Team effort that changed a man's life

Monday, 7 May 2007

An interview with Engineering Specialist, Luis Sanchez

El Paso, Texas, USA — Luis Mario Sanchez III is an Engineering Specialist for Bain Medina Bain, a Texas engineering firm. In his 12-year career, he has dealt mostly with transportation infrastructure projects. Luis told us of one special project that he’ll never forget.

Luis Sanchez, Engineering Specialist, at the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas.

MicroStation Today: What’s your definition of a challenging project?
Luis: That’s easy. A good example would be ROC 52, the biggest transportation design-build project in the Midwest Region. [Editor's note: ROC 52 stands for U.S. Highway 52 in Rochester and Oldsted Counties, Minnesota.] The pressure on that project was that we were getting constant “change orders” for overhead sign structures and striping layouts coming in from the field every couple of hours. The work had to be done and sent back out to the field within an hour of receiving the order. This went on for two years, nine to ten hours a day!

MST: Why the unusual time demands?
Luis: It was very important to the company running the ROC 52 project that the schedule wasn’t inhibited in any way. It was important that we did not inconvenience the public with multiple construction zones any more than was absolutely necessary. Since this was the first design-build of its kind, public support was vital to its success. Plus, we needed to stay on schedule and not lose money. Even with the unrelenting demands to produce, we managed to get 14 months ahead of schedule in the roadway department. Using Axiom tools religiously helped us a lot. SpellCheckerPlus and Microsoft Office Importer helped out with importing spreadsheets, verifying quantities, checking all our notes for plan sheets and creating summaries for ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) and MOT (Maintenance of Traffic) layouts. There were so many summaries and estimates in the design-build that we did not have time to create them the old way, using only MicroStation. Microsoft Office Importer made it so easy to import data into our design files. Time is money. But in design-build, time is critical to the engineer’s scheduling and the contractor’s deadlines.

MST: How did you manage that incredible pace?
Luis: With an incredible team. There were seven of us from Alliant Engineering and URS Corporation. Everybody worked together, checking each others’ work and coming up with solutions on the fly. It was very productive and the camaraderie was outstanding! We certainly worked hard, but we played hard too. It was through the interaction and trust in each other that the bonds of that remarkable team were built.

MST: So this team of guys from different firms all became friends?
Luis: Yes, and not only work friends. It went far beyond the bounds of our working relationships during a time of personal crisis for me. I was living in Rochester, Minnesota in an apartment complex. There had been flooding in the area and my complex was affected. I arrived home and was devastated to find that many of my belongings had been ruined, some of great sentimental value to me. On top of that, the landlord told me I had to relocate in 24 hours! My friends from Alliant Engineering and URS Corporation heard about the situation and came to my aide. Not only did they work tirelessly to get all my stuff loaded on a moving truck, they also drove me to Minneapolis and helped me move into my new place. I’ll never forget the support they gave me when I really needed it. That’s the kind of team this was. I wish everyone could experience what it’s like to be part of something like that. It’s life changing.

MST: That’s a wonderful story. How does it feel looking back on that team experience?
Luis: I am very proud to have been a part of the ROC 52 group and consider it the most complex and challenging project I have ever encountered. I enjoyed working for a great firm with my former bosses: John Dillingham of Alliant Engineering, David Rossman of Bonestroo Engineering and Gary Shannon and Kao Yang of URS Corporation. I look at my work experience and my career as a life-experience classroom among friends, extended family and culture. I have taken advantage of every opportunity possible to learn something new. I value my coworkers not only as friends, but also as part of my family.

MST: Can you summarize your experience and what you’re doing now?
Luis: I was educated at El Paso Community College and interned at El Paso Water Utilities. I then joined the Texas Department of Transportation in the Survey Department. From there I went into the private sector which has taken me to Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, New Mexico, California and back to Texas. I’m an Engineering and GEOPAK Specialist at Bain Medina Bain and am also pursuing a degree in Surveying under the guidance of my mentor Raymond Medina, who is my boss and good friend. Our survey projects are some of the most complex in South Central Texas.

MST: In your 12 years of CAD work, have you used any tools that have “saved your skin”?
Luis: Yes, FileFixer definitely saved my skin when I was called in to salvage a job while working in Montana. I pushed hard and did six months worth of work in six weeks. Then suddenly the file wouldn’t load because MicroStation couldn’t read the corrupted elements in one area of the file. My boss used FileFixer and we were able to salvage almost the entire file, saving me four weeks worth of work. Our deadline was three days later and we made it!

MST: Fantastic! Thank you for sharing some important moments of your CAD career and your life with us.

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CAD Controversy

Monday, 7 May 2007

Letter to the Editor: CAD Consultant’s response to John Evans’ opinion on a unified file format.

Dear Editor,

I agree almost entirely with John Evans’ comments. However, I do not think lowering the bar to the DWG format is the answer.

The DGN format is superior in functionality and would expand the capabilities of those using DWG. I started on the Intergraph system and have worked with both AutoCAD and MicroStation for many years. DGN’ s superior referencing, fencing and masking of reference files alone justifies the format as superior to DWG.

Unfortunately, Mr. Evans is correct in saying that DWG may prevail. Look at Beta versus VHS. Unfortunately the better product may not be the end-user’s preferred product.

Brian MacCartney
CAD Consultant
My comments are my own views and do not represent any opinion of my employer.

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Axiom and Philips: Healing the sick with CellManager

Monday, 7 May 2007

Eindhoven, The Netherlands — When a multinational electronics giant wants to increase quality and speed of service, who do they call?

Philips Medical Systems (Philips) of Eindhoven, The Netherlands is one of the key players in the world of major medical devices like x-ray, CAT scan and MRI systems. After a sale of such sophisticated (and large) devices, a hospital room must be configured for the most efficient placement of the equipment. For this reason, Philips has created over 1,700 MicroStation cells for site planning. These cells graphically represent the medical devices and contain technical information for installing the devices at the customer’s site. Philips’ site planners work with customer requirements to design the best possible layout for any rooms in which these devices will be housed. As part of this process, site planners browse through the available MicroStation cells and select the appropriate ones to complete a set of pre-installation drawings for the customer.

Using a combination of a new CellManager feature and MicroStation script files, Jean-Paul Pors, European Support Manager for Philips, is able to take a previously time-consuming manual process and turn it into an automated batch process.

A major impediment to the site design process is the huge number of cells from many different libraries that must be browsed to design each room. Jean-Paul Pors of the site planning support department at Philips had this to say:

“We designed a concept for improving the process of designing a hospital room and started the development with the help of DHV [an Information Management company] and Atos Origin [an Information Technology company]. The basic idea was to automatically generate system-specific cell libraries, so the site planners can have all the required cells for a specific system in one place! The master cells remain stored in their original libraries. We managed to generate configuration-based cell shopping lists (.txt files) via Excel, but found execution roadblocks in MicroStation.”

After considering all the costs involved, it was worthwhile for Philips to look for an alternate solution. For many years, Philips’ site design team had reaped the benefits of using Axiom’s popular CellManager application to document, update, organize and manage their cell libraries. So they enlisted the help of Axiom to remove the roadblocks and create a faster way to generate system-specific cell libraries. Axiom added to CellManager the ability to create sub-libraries from a list of selected cells contained in a text file. Result: Using a combination of this new CellManager feature and MicroStation script files, Philips was able to take a previously time-consuming manual process and turn it into an automated batch process. Jean-Paul Pors of Philips says: “Involving Axiom was a good choice! Because of the great new CellManager features, we now have a process that is far more advanced and automated than we dared to dream of!”

Using CellManager, Jean-Paul is projecting a 25% decrease in the time required for the site-planning process. CellManager can’t mend broken bones or lower your cholesterol, but can help heal those sick of browsing through massive cell libraries. No prescription needed!

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Adding submenus to your Axiom pull-down menu

Monday, 7 May 2007

By Rick Sewell, Customer Support
I want to show you one of the newest features added to the Axiom menu. You can now rearrange your Axiom software applications on the Axiom pull-down menu so it is organized they way you want.

For example, you could group your quality assurance products together, including SpecChecker, SpecMonitor, SpecManager, RuleManager and SpellCheckerPlus. Also your reference handling tools, RefManager, RefMerge and RefWriter could be grouped together. In this article, we will make a reference tool group by creating a submenu for RefManager, RefMerge and RefWriter.

Let’s get started.
Axiom pull-down menu basics

What displays on your Axiom pull-down menu is determined by the contents of a simple text file called “aximenu.cfg”. This file can be modified in various ways to customize your Axiom pull-down menu.

The “aximenu.cfg” file is located in the “aximenu” folder, which is in your Axiom base directory (the location where you installed your Axiom products). The default location for the Axiom base directory for V7 is “C:\program files\axiom\V7\” and for V8 the location is “C:\program files\axiom\V8\”.

How to create submenus on your Axiom pull-down menu
Submenus are great. They allow you to shorten your Axiom pull-down menu and categorize your listed Axiom software applications.

Figure 1: This is the default Axiom pull-down menu. Wow! We sure do have a lot of tools to help save your time (and sanity). Now, you can create submenus listing any tools you like. (See Figure 2.)

Below is an excerpt from a modified V8 “aximenu.cfg” file with its corresponding Axiom pull-down menu display:

Figure 2: This is the Axiom pull-down menu with reference file tools grouped in a submenu.
Cool, eh?

The difference between the two menus above is caused by differences in the “aximenu.cfg” file (see Figure 3). These changes are simple and easy to make.

To comment a product, simply place a colon (:) in front of it. For example, perhaps I only want my users to use DgnCompare for V8. Look at the illustrations below to see how simple it is.

Figure 3: On the left is an excerpt form the default “aximenu.cfg” file. On the right is an example of a customized section of “aximenu.cfg”.

Here are some rules:

  • When a line starts with a “#”, it indicates that the rest of the alphanumeric characters on that line will display on the Axiom pull-down menu. The only exception to this rule is the “~” symbol, which will not display and is used to signify that the character following it is the hot key to load this application.

    • Example: “#~RefManager for V8″ will display “RefManager for V8″ on the menu.

  • The line that comes immediately after each line that starts with “#” has one of two purposes. It defines exactly what is to be loaded when the menu item is selected, or it defines where a submenu will begin (in cases where a submenu is used).
  • Each desired submenu requires three additional lines. You will need:
    1. A name for your menu: “#Name”
    2. The command to start the menu: “SUBMENU:”
    3. The command to stop the menu: “ENDSUBMENU:”

You will, of course, need menu items to go between the “SUBMENU:” and the “ENDSUBMENU:” to make it useful.

Good luck on your road to organization!

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