Archive for November, 2007

New InRoads training libraries!

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

Axiom and Mark Ditko team up to release InRoads e-learning courses.

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Axiom announces the release of the first-ever browser-based InRoads training courses. InRoads is a civil engineering package for both MicroStation and AutoCAD, which is used by about half of the Departments of Transportation in the United States, as well as numerous engineering firms for site and road design. As part of this release, the LearningBay InRoads courses have been grouped into eleven major libraries (groups of similar courses) as follows:

  • Orientation to InRoads
  • Methods & Tools
  • Production Essentials
  • Settings, Styles and Symbology
  • Surface Essentials
  • Horizontal Geometry
  • Profiling
  • Vertical Geometry
  • Typical Sections
  • Corridor Modeling
  • Cross Sections

LearningBay offers the world’s first e-learning courses for InRoads.

Each new InRoads course is available for delivery with either LearningBay Enterprise, LearningBay Professional or via the LearningBay Hosted service. For those new to Axiom’s training products, LearningBay Enterprise is a learning management system (LMS) for use in a mid- to large-scale corporate environment. LearningBay Professional is similar but designed for use in a small- to mid-size company. LearningBay Hosted is a training site hosted by Axiom and accessed via the Internet. With all three methods of course delivery, the student simply logs in using a browser and takes the course at their own pace.

Since their introduction, LearningBay courses have advanced traditional methods of training. Until Axiom came on the scene, MicroStation training was limited to instructor-led classes, help files and manuals. The online courses combine thorough sets of instruction with hands-on labs, videos and practice sessions, in a self-paced setting with centralized monitoring and examination, extending the traditional training model to new levels of effectiveness. Instructors can keep tabs on student progress, identify trouble areas (either slow students or difficult subjects), set requirements and more. Students learn InRoads at their own pace, on their own schedule, right from their own desk. Further, LearningBay can automatically build review content based on missed test questions. Students have the materials available to them at all times for reference or review. As this announcement goes to press, hundreds of corporate customers are already taking advantage of Axiom’s efficient training solutions for Bentley products like MicroStation and GEOPAK.

Inroads Essentials includes audio, video and a glossary on every page.

As mentioned in the MicroStation Today, Extra Edition earlier this year, Axiom has partnered with InRoads guru, Mark Ditko. Mark leads an all-star cast of authors, generating and maintaining the hundreds of pages of content that comprise the full set of InRoads libraries. “What makes me excited about this joint venture with Axiom,” said Mark Ditko, “is that I’m able to combine my years of InRoads training know-how with Axiom’s proven learning technology to produce the highest quality on-demand e-learning courses.” Axiom has once again enlisted the help of experts to create the absolute best, training materials possible.

LearningBay began with a full set of libraries for MicroStation, then released nine training libraries of GEOPAK, a powerful civil engineering package for MicroStation. With the InRoads and GEOPAK libraries, Axiom can efficiently train the vast majority of civil engineers across the United States and even around the world.

InRoads training is available and waiting for you. If your company uses InRoads for civil design, give Axiom a call to learn more.

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Your friendly Axiom Maintenance Plus gal

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

By TJ Crabtree, Maintenance Service Consultant
Clearwater, Florida, USA &mash; Have you ever bought some software and then had to struggle with getting it up and running? Here at Axiom, we are not satisfied to just sell software. We want our software used. That’s why we make it – to make the MicroStation user’s life easier. That’s where I come in. My name is TJ Crabtree and I am your friendly Axiom Maintenance Plus gal. We really do go to great lengths to ensure that our software gets used. As a matter of fact, there is a sign on the wall here that lists one of our major goals as: “Outstanding products successfully being used.” The “being used” part is key to Axiom’s success. We have a policy here that someone from Axiom’s Customer Service Department calls everyone who purchases an Axiom product within a few days after they get the software, to make sure they were able to get it installed and working. Axiom not only provides technical support for the Axiom products that help you to be more efficient with MicroStation, but often we can help with your MicroStation-related issues too.
There are many things Axiom does to ensure our products are successfully being used. This summer, we sent Axiom employees to Kansas City, New York, Seattle, California, Canada and even all the way over to England. (I volunteered, but I didn’t get to go to England.)

Even over the phone, you will know TJ is smiling.

Axiom Maintenance Plus
More than your average maintenance program, Axiom Maintenance Plus combines tech support, software upgrades, training and custom programming to cover all the bases. The technical staff here at Axiom strives to ensure that, as a user of Axiom’s products, you always have all the benefits you need to really get the most out of your Axiom products.

The Axiom name for customers that have Axiom Maintenance Plus is “Maintenance Plus holders”, but I like to call them VIPs. My father is a civil engineer, so I understand my customers and what they do.

With Axiom Maintenance Plus you get:

  • The latest updates for the products you own, provided at no charge.
  • Unlimited technical support via telephone, fax, e-mail or mail. If you are having a problem, just let us know.
  • Bug fixes and work-arounds. We specialize in solving production snags and MicroStation workflow issues.
  • High priority given to your enhancement requests. We get lots of requests for easier ways to do things in MicroStation. That is how we know what new features to add to our software. We look at Maintenance Plus holder’s requests first.
  • The latest version of the product, sent automatically at least once a year.
  • One hour of free user training via the Internet or two hours of free custom programming, for every $500 paid on annual maintenance.

MicroStation Productivity Toolkit and Axiom Maintenance Plus
MicroStation Productivity Toolkit combines Axiom’s top time-saving utilities in one cost-efficient package. Occasionally we add new programs to Toolkit. As a bonus for Toolkit owners with Maintenance Plus, you get any and all new products that get added – free of charge.

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From city streets to drag strips to dams — An interview with Burns & McDonnell’s Frank Nelson

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

Kansas City, Missouri, USA — When MicroStation Today caught up with Frank Nelson at the Mid-Continent MicroStation Community (MCMC) summer conference in Kansas City, he was swamped. In addition to his busy life as project manager for Burns & McDonnell, he also volunteers as a vendor coordinator for the MCMC and just had a grandson.

Frank Nelson would like to introduce Wesley

MicroStation Today: You have been in the design field for almost 35 years now, how has your role changed?
Frank: In 1988, after 15 years of hand drafting and design, I purchased my first laptop with a 20MB hard drive and started learning drafting and designing in CAD. However, it was not until I joined Burns & McDonnell in 1998 that I encountered MicroStation and went from the world of AutoCAD to the world of MicroStation. I did have some adjustment time. About the time that I began to understand and become familiar with MicroStation V7, the Bentley folks took a quantum leap into V8. The introduction of V8 moved MicroStation from a good drafting/design platform to a great platform and from swearing at it to swearing by it. As a transportation/civil engineer, I have developed CAD designs in a dozen states and a couple foreign countries. These designs have included parking lots, city streets, state highways, sanitary sewers, a racetrack/dragstrip combination in Topeka, Kansas and roadway relocation for a water supply dam in Arkansas. I am a registered professional engineer in Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas.

MST: What is your official position? What are some of the problems that you encounter in your position?
Frank: My official position at Burns & McDonnell is Project Manager.

Putting together a set of plans for a state highway department always requires an inordinate amount of quantities tables, drainage area/storm sewer tables, design data tables and miscellaneous tables. In one particular set of plans for a highway improvement project for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT), there was a multitude of these tables and the scope of the project was continually changing (depending upon which ODOT manager had last reviewed it). Consequently, the tables were continually changing. I knew there must be an easier way than the old-fashioned way of copying parallel lines and entering text, then having to revise the entire drawing with every change. When I looked into importing the design spreadsheets, instead of drafting them into the drawing, I found that the spreadsheet import capabilities of MicroStation and Excel were entirely inadequate for the size of spreadsheets that the Oklahoma project required. Since Burns & McDonnell had Axiom’s MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, I decided to try Microsoft Office Importer. I was surprised and pleased. After I learned how to use Microsoft Office Importer, I could import our huge drawing-size spreadsheets with ease. The spreadsheets could be easily updated in Excel and Microsoft Office Importer’s linking capabilities would automatically update the table in the drawing. Additionally, if you took the time to set the spreadsheet up in a professional manner by formatting the cells, rows and columns, the result would be a sharp, professional looking table in the drawing. I was so pleased with the results that I presented a session on Microsoft Office Importer’s capabilities at our user group’s (MCMC) summer conference the next year.

The CAD gurus at Burns & McDonnell taught a course on FileFixer. Using FileFixer to put the data back in the right places saved my sanity. It was extremely frustrating to have worked many hours on a design drawing in MicroStation and GEOPAK and having it “crash” on you. You can see the hours that you and your other designers have spent on that drawing flash before your eyes and can only imagine how the loss of this drawing will impact your project deadline. Fortunately, the CAD gurus at Burns & McDonnell did get FileFixer for us and taught us how to use it.

I have begun using FileFixer for V8 on DGN files before I export them to the DWG format. Likewise, I use FileFixer for V8 on DWG files that I have imported into the DGN format. It is nice to have a tool like FileFixer for V8 that cleans up the loose ends that “get lost in the translation.”

Another Axiom product that I have used to solve a problem is LearningBay’s MicroStation V8 Essentials. This self-paced, computer-based learning program has increased my productivity in V8 by teaching both the basics, as well as some good tips and tricks for using V8. MicroStation V8 was relatively new when I first went through the program. I also plan to go through Axiom’s LearningBay courses on GEOPAK Drainage and Site.

As a project manager, I am also concerned about our design and detailing staff’s productivity on my projects. Most of them know how to use Microsoft Office Importer and FileFixer. However, there are many other tools in Axiom’s MicroStation Productivity Toolkit that could be of great benefit to our company if the staff were aware of them and knew how to use them. This August, we were fortunate to have Axiom’s Mr. Greg McKinney come to our MCMC summer conference. The day before the conference, I invited Mr. McKinney to come to Burns & McDonnell and give us a brief overview of all of the other tools in Axiom’s Toolkit. The luncheon session was packed. In addition to Greg’s interesting and informative presentation, the attendees were enthusiastic about the potential uses for these new tools. We appreciated Greg’s visit and his presentation. He also provided copies of Axiom’s excellent brochure “Time-Saving Tools for the Overworked MicroStation User” for all of the attendees.

Frank Nelson speeds up projects with FileFixer and Microsoft Office Importer.

MST: Where would you like to be in ten years?
Frank: Retired. Maybe teaching and playing with CAD and dabbling in design on a part-time basis.

MST: What do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Frank: What I’d like to see as the “next big thing” in CAD is for Axiom to put together a self-paced, computer-based LearningBay program on MicroStation Productivity Toolkit and other tools. It was nice to have Greg come to tell us about all the tools, but unless my staff can get trained on them, odds are they won’t use them to their fullest potential, if at all. Like every tool, whether it’s a simple claw hammer or a multi-million-dollar jet fighter, the productivity increase that the user gets from that tool is directly proportional to the user’s capability to use that tool. Training increases capability, which in turn increases productivity.

MST: Thanks, Frank.

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Increase productivity with Axiom training.

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

By Fredrick R. Kenniston III
Clearwater, Florida, USA — You hold your tongue as you say, “How many times do I have to tell you how to locate what library a certain cell is in?” to a somewhat bewildered co-worker. I know, you probably never get impatient, but this is the third time he has been back, almost begging you to tell him, again, how to locate this same cell.

It starts off simple enough. You take a co-worker or member of your design team aside, you start explaining how to do a particular thing and you get very polite indications they are following what you are saying, like “I see, yeah, okay.” You know, despite his reassurance, that he does not really understand what you are saying. Sure enough, after a period of time, that same person is back – asking how to do that same thing. This chews up very valuable time for you, the person you are attempting to train, and your company.

Almost every profession, skill or job requires some form of training to ensure one is proficient enough to utilize the tools and do the actions. This holds especially true when it comes to the general subject of computer training. The more specialized the subject, like learning Bentley and Axiom products, the more important it is.

When I started working at Axiom twenty years ago, I had good basic electronics, computer and communications training and skills, acquired during my enlistment in the US Navy. However, when I started working in the very technical field of computer-aided design, it was like learning a foreign language. Fortunately for me, I also had some very knowledgeable and experienced people around me, like David Greenbaum, CEO of Axiom, that made learning this field a lot less painful than it otherwise might have been.

Since then, I have had to train many others on their computer basics and also on MicroStation and Axiom products. Over the years, I learned one very important thing: If I only told a person how to do something with Bentley or Axiom product, they wouldn’t retain the information. I would have to train them on that very same thing again at a later time. You have probably experienced this yourself.

Axiom’s Frederick Kenniston uses his wealth of experience to deliver online training straight to your desktop.

Online training
About five years ago, Axiom started offering its Axiom Maintenance Plus service. This includes support, updates and other benefits, like online training for the Axiom products covered. (Note: Contact your Axiom MicroStation Consultant for exact details on what Axiom Maintenance Plus covers).

Axiom’s online training covers the basics of Axiom products. It also gives you and your design team answers to questions like:

  • How do I use RefManager to turn the reference file display off, in views four through eight, in all my master files?
  • How do I set the scale factor for text in an Excel file that I am pasting it into a MicroStation file using Axiom’s Microsoft Office Importer?
  • How do I set up a timed execution of FileFixer to run after normal business hours?

Each online training session is designed to cover the basics of a particular Axiom product. Because it is live, we can tailor the training on the fly to cover the things you want covered. This makes Axiom’s online training much more effective overall. Here is what one supervisor said about their group attending one of our online training sessions:

“Everyone on our team was very impressed with the training. I work within a team of five, and out of that, one team member had no background in MicroStation. He was very happy with how easily he could follow.”

Suite 16
Most of you are probably already familiar with Axiom’s MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V8. However, have you ever counted up how many products are actually included in our MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V8? Well, if you haven’t, this suite of time-saving MicroStation tools consists of sixteen separate products! Learning even the basics of each product on your own would not be a light undertaking.

Catch 22 resolved.
Axiom’s programming department works very hard to help make our programs as intuitive and easy to use as possible. Based on success stories and feedback from our customers, our products are intuitive and easy to use. A great majority of our clients successfully utilize our products every day. However, you do have deadlines to meet and time-sensitive production requirements, leaving you precious little time to sit down and run through, for example, the FileFixer for V8 Quick Start on your own. You know that Axiom’s products will help you and your co-workers, but you are so swamped you haven’t had time to learn them. So, what do you do, given the lack of time you have for learning such things? You call Axiom and get scheduled for online training! Do it now, right away!

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Tips & Tricks — A shortcut that will make your life easier

Wednesday, 7 November 2007

I’m betting that your CAD shop is like most: You have multiple projects rolling right now. Maybe even dozens. You wish you had the luxury of having only one project to worry about (what a dream that would be). What’s more, unless you have been very lucky, each project has its own set of standards. Yikes!

When we talk about standards, we’re referring to the different fonts, cell libraries, pen tables and other settings in use while creating the project files for submittal. Anything that can be variable from one client to another is something that you would more than likely define in a project-configuration file for that client’s submittals.

A project-configuration file is a file used to define configuration variables particular to certain projects on which a site may be working. Any variable definitions within this file will take precedence over MicroStation’s default variable definitions. Project-configuration files are located, by default, in the “..ustationconfigproject” directory and follow the naming convention of ProjectName.pcf.

There are a lot of different issues associated with the information above that can make it seem rather confusing. The standards for each project aren’t different just to make life interesting. Clients have their own reasons for wanting the projects presented in a certain way. I can’t change any of that. It is simply how things work in a typical MicroStation shop. What I do want to do here is pass on one little way you might be able to simplify your day-to-day work. I want to show you how to load the right project from your desktop shortcuts. If nothing else, it will guarantee you the right project is selected every time, so you minimize mistakes.

Creating desktop shortcuts to define your projects
To create a customized desktop shortcut for your project, you must first create a new shortcut for MicroStation. We can then customize this new MicroStation shortcut to open the project of choice.

  • Right-click on an empty section of your Windows desktop. From the menu that comes up select New|Shortcut.

    • Right-click on the desktop to make your shortcut.

  • From the “Create Shortcut” dialog box, press <Browse.>. Using the “Browse for Folder” dialog box, navigate to and select the file “ustation.exe” from the folder where MicroStation has been installed. Then click <OK>. From the “Create Shortcut” dialog box, press <Next>.

    • You can name your shortcut anything, regardless of what application the shortcut actually loads.

  • You will be prompted to “Type a name for this shortcut:”. I recommend you enter a name that specifically describes the project that you plan on specifying with this shortcut. Press <Finish> to complete the shortcut. Now you can customize your desktop shortcut to load the right project.
  • Right-click on your newly created desktop shortcut and select “Properties”.
  • In the “Target:” field you’ll see the full path to “ustation.exe”. Next to “ustation.exe” add a space and t hen -WP(project-configuration file name).
    For example, if your project-configuration file is called “867-530.pcf”, the line should look like this:
    “C:Program FilesBentleyProgramMicroStationustation.exe” -WP867-530 (assuming MicroStation has been installed in the default location).

    Notice the file extension is excluded from the line. This is intentional, as it won’t work if you add the file extension.

    • You can name your shortcut anything, regardless of what application the shortcut actually loads.

  • Press <Apply>, then <OK> to exit.

Now, when you load MicroStation from this desktop shortcut, you should find that the correct project-configuration file is automatically selected.

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