Archive for the ‘CAD Manager Tools’ Category

PDF Your Entire MicroStation Cell Library in Under 5 Minutes

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Tired of searching around for cells?

By Rick DeWitt
You’re in charge of getting everybody on your company’s latest engineering design project up to speed and productive. The customer has supplied you with the cell library, seed files and standards that have to be followed. You open the V8 cell library and discover that there are over three hundred cells and they all use the old, cryptic, six-character cell names.

Figure 1. CellManager automatically creates a cell library notebook in PDF format — complete with a table of contents — resulting in ease of distribution and increased speed in finding the cells you need on any project.

You realize that the only way to get your drafters to find the correct cells, without wasting valuable production time, is to provide them with an easy-to-access, visual presentation of the cells in this library.

Cell Library to PDF in About Five Minutes
With CellManager, you could have what you need in about five minutes. How?

Start up MicroStation V8 and open the cell library you want to document.
Start CellManager by selecting “CellManager for V8″ from the “Axiom” pull-down menu in MicroStation.
In CellManager’s main dialog box, make sure the open cell library is shown in the “Files:” field. If not, click the {Select…} button to open the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box and select your cell library.
From CellManager’s main dialog box, click Settings | Change Settings… to open CellManager’s “Change Settings” dialog box (Figure 2). Now, adjust the “Page Settings” to 25 models per page. Next, click on “Plot Settings” and select the standard MicroStation “PDF” plot configuration file and “ANSI A” paper size. (“ANSI” stands for “American National Standards Institute”. “ANSI A” is a notation for a paper size of 8.5 by 11 inches.) Click {OK} to close the dialog box.

Figure 2. CellManager makes it easy for you to create a page that will display up to 25 cells (models) per page. You can also choose from a variety of page sizes using the “Change Settings” dialog box.

Click the {Draw Pages…} button from CellManager’s main dialog box (Figure 3) to open the “Draw Pages” dialog box.

Figure 3. After selecting which cells to work with, the {Draw Pages…} button opens a “Draw Pages” dialog box that gives you various options for drawing, plotting and displaying your cell notebook pages.

Then, click the {Draw Pages} button on the “Draw Pages” dialog box (Figure 4) to have CellManager automatically generate the page graphics you will use for your documentation.
With the pages all set for plotting, simply click the {Create Plots} button (Figure 4) on the “Draw Pages” dialog box. CellManager automatically generates each page of the PDF and then combines all the pages into a single PDF file. Once the PDF file is created, an “Information” dialog box pops up giving you the exact name and location of the newly created PDF file. Your new file will have the same name as the cell library, but will have a “.pdf” extension.

Figure 4. The magic begins when you click on {Draw Pages} and the cells are generated on screen. Clicking {Create Plots} saves a PDF file of your cell library. When done, just click on {Display…} to view your freshlyminted PDF file.

Click {OK} to close the information dialog box and return to the “Draw Pages” dialog box.
Finally, click the {Display…} button on the “Draw Pages” dialog box (Figure 4) to open your newly created cell library documentation!

In about five minutes, you’ve created a beautiful, easy-to-use PDF file documenting all your cells (over 300 in this example) that you can easily distribute to your staff. How’s that for efficiency?

Want Cell Library Documentation Fast? Call Now!
For more information on CellManager or to obtain a free trial version, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 2353, www.AxiomInt.com now!

Posted in Articles, CAD Manager Tools, CAD User Tools, CellManager | No Comments »

How to Keep MicroStation V8i Training Costs Down

Thursday, 14 March 2013

While Increasing Billable Hours and Maintaining High Quality

Clearwater, Florida, USA — “V8i training? We don’t have the budget for that.” That is a typical response that many CAD users and managers are getting today. There seem to be fewer engineers and drafters around and those that remain are needed to work on the projects at hand. Sending people out for training just doesn’t seem to be an option due to both the direct costs (including travel costs) and lost production time. Doing training in-house, while saving the travel costs, still isn’t cheap either and often consumes more valuable billable hours than management is comfortable with giving up. Yet, you’re still left with the nightmare of training users — as well as yourself — on the upgrade to V8i with all its attendant interface changes and new features. On top of that, you must integrate this new version of MicroStation seamlessly into projects and workflow without any flubs or hiccups. How do you get users quickly trained on V8i without losing valuable production time?

Have you ever had a similar “Catch 22″? LearningBay is an effective, affordable training solution that is available to your users 24/7 allowing them to get trained without heavy losses to your production schedule.

Only the Billable Survive
Delivering billable hours while producing high-quality designs is critical for both you and your organization. Fortunately, Axiom has a solution that will allow you to get the V8i training you need to keep both the quality of work and billable hours high. LearningBay from Axiom is an affordable, online, e-learning training solution that effectively trains your personnel on the specific areas of MicroStation that they need to learn or brush up on. They don’t need to waste time going over topics that they already know. And, they can do all the training without having to leave their desks!

What’s special about these courses?
They include “Learning Videos” where students watch the instructor demonstrate what is presented in the lesson pages.

Short on time? The course lessons are arranged in 30-minute segments to make it easier to get through a course on a daily schedule that won’t interrupt production hours.

Videos are included where the instructor expresses insights or tips relating to the lesson pages and entices viewers to move on to subsequent lessons.

With sample files and illustrated step-by-step exercises, students are able to strengthen their learned skills at their own pace, as well as explore freely without fear of compromising or damaging live project files.

Need a “paper trail” for all that MicroStation training you’ve done? LearningBay makes that easy because all the courses are in a Professional Development Hours format and include a course syllabus, course description, student worksheets, course objectives, a list of topics and a course completion plan.

Need an edge in getting that promotion? Upgrade your skills in V8i with structured on-line training that documents your every course completion to the satisfaction of most HR requirements.

Figure 1. To get this tip, click on “v” (video instructions), which opens a narrated video by MicroStation evangelist Mike Arroyo. Here he gives an animated instruction showing how the “Copy Manipulation” task is executed so you don’t make unnecessary copies. Multimedia features like these make LearningBay’s training courses in V8i very clear and easy to pick up.

The videos provide easy-to-follow instructions. For example, Axiom’s own MicroStation evangelist, Mike Arroyo, goes over the “Double-Click Icon” in Lesson 1 of “Manipulate Basics”. While using a manipulation command like “Copy”, Mike lets you in on the following tip: “Just double-click on an icon (works with most icons) and you’ll get a grayed-out icon [Figure 1]. Then, when you select an object to copy it, and once the object is placed, MicroStation automatically terminates the command so you don’t keep placing the same object over and over.”

LearningBay courses are designed such that beginner, intermediate and advanced materials are grouped into libraries. Each library contains related courses that cover that subject. For example, some courses included in the V8i Essentials FastStart Library are:

The MicroStation Environment — This course covers MicroStation interface basics such as the differences between dialog and settings boxes, how to dock tools and some dialog boxes along the edges of the screen, as well as the topic of when and why one would “pin” tools or boxes to the edge. These are just a few lessons in this course designed to make you even more indispensable to your peers, executives and your organization.

Interface Basics — There is more to the MicroStation interface than icons and dialog boxes. This course begins with the two types of MicroStation interfaces, dialog and toolbox, and quickly goes into task navigation. Learn how to efficiently move between drawing tasks, as well as master the Tool Settings box.

Drawing Tasks Part 1, 2 and 3 — Here are three courses written for those who need to quickly know how to draw inside V8i without the information overload. Each course explores key drawing tasks like how to insert drawing objects into the design, how to work with related tool options and how to measure distances, place cells or symbols and add dimensions to drawings.

Model Start — An introduction to modeling that shows how to create design files, how models are stored inside a single DGN, the two different types of models, as well as how to create, modify and import existing models.

Figure 2. Where do you find lesson terms and what the heck do those icons mean? Just going to the “i” icon (information page) takes you to the page which gives you all the terms used in an easy-to-understand layout so you can effectively apply your V8i tools.

By training at their own desk, on a schedule and pace that fits CAD managers and users alike, LearningBay makes the task of training far more convenient and with less expense than sending staff out for training. The training is always available to fit whatever level of expertise is needed and can be delivered whenever most convenient. This “always on” training means it can be accessed as often as users like, for review or refresher training, whenever it’s needed. “With no travel costs, no instructor costs, no waiting and no scheduling to worry about, this training makes V8i users billable faster and at a reduced cost,” says Mike Arroyo, Axiom’s world-renowned MicroStation evangelist and Vice President for Learning.

Figure 3. Clicking on the “n” icon (instructor notes) provides notes from the instructor in video format. The notes include tips and insights on the upcoming task. It is these little features that give LearningBay students an incentive to continue on to the next lesson and finish the course — to say nothing of Mike’s cool beret.

Call now!
For more information on browser based or on-site training, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 2291, e-mail 2291@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com now!

Tags: LearningBay
Posted in Articles, CAD Manager Tools, MicroStation Training, MicroStation v8i | No Comments »

Four problems users have with MicroStation

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

And four solutions!

Have you ever had difficulty importing text from Microsoft Word or tables from Excel into MicroStation with the correct text justification, tabs and spacing intact?

Have you ever opened a design file and discovered that one or more reference files are not attached due to messed up reference file attachment paths?

Have you ever needed to make changes to some text in hundreds of design files, requiring someone to open each file, one at a time, just to change a few lines?

Have you ever had a design file added to a project requiring you to now renumber a large portion of the files in the project?

All of these situations can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Is it frustrating not being able to import spreadsheet and word processing data with the correct formatting?
What do MicroStation users do when they need to import text or spreadsheets (large or small) into their design files with perfect formatting?

Just highlight and copy your Excel data (or word-processing text) to make it ready for Microsoft Office Importer to paste into MicroStation. The above is a simple example. In actual fact, Microsoft Office Importer can handle massive spreadsheets and documents (including those with very complex formatting).

Using MicroStation’s native Paste and Paste Special functions, users often find that their spreadsheets and Word documents become nothing like they used to be. Also, what if you need to paste a bill of materials (or a schedule) into a design file and keep a link to the original spreadsheet? The handling is as simple as this:

Microsoft Office Importer is easy to use. Just click the “Paste” icon to paste the contents of the clipboard into your design file.

Open your Excel spreadsheet or Word document and copy to the clipboard whatever you want placed into MicroStation.
Load MicroStation and open the design file you want to import data into.
Microsoft Office Importer will auto-load and be ready for you to just press the <Paste Clipboard Contents> button. (Or if you don’t yet have Microsoft Office Importer, just give Axiom a call.)
Now data-click anywhere on the design plane to make your paste.

When you paste data using <i>Microsoft Office Importer</i>, all the data comes in with perfect formatting (even on spreadsheets a hundred times the size of the above). Plus Microsoft Office Importer does it all in one paste.

That’s it. Problem solved.

Messed up reference file attachments paths?
A customer from a large engineering firm once called me and said that over the weekend, the IT department had changed a server drive letter from “H:” to “I:”, which was no big deal to the people in the IT department. However, it was a big deal to my friend on the other end of the line, as this “minor change” broke every single reference attachment in all their projects — totaling over ten thousand design files. Also, for some reason beyond his control, it was not going to be possible to change the drive letter back. This story ended happily, however. I told him how to perform the steps below with RefManager™ and it solved his whole problem. Now I’ll share this solution with you.

To make a simple example, we’ll say that all your design files were moved from the “H:” drive to the “I:” drive, without any changes to the folder structure. Here’s how to fix that problem:

Open MicroStation and choose RefManager for V8 from your Axiom menu.
Choose “Modify Reference File Attachments” from RefManager’s “Action:” option button. The “Modify Reference File Attachments” box will open and the “Attachment Names” category will be selected by default.
In the “From:” field, enter the old drive letter, “H:” (without the quote marks).
In the “To:” field, enter the new drive letter, “I:” (without the quote marks).
In the “Apply to:” field, choose “Only Vector Reference Files”.

In the example above, the user has told RefManager to change the drive letter stored in his reference attachments from “H:” to “I:”. The user can run this modification on multiple master design files, easily changing all his reference attachments in one easy job.

Press <Close> to close the “Modify Reference File Attachments” box.
In the main RefManager dialog box, press the <Select> button next to the “Master Files:” field. Then select the master files whose reference attachments you want to process. When done, press <OK> to return to the main RefManager dialog box.
Press <Start>. RefManager will replace “H:” drive with “I:” drive in any vector reference attachments in which a path containing “H:” drive is stored. Case (such as an upper-case “H” or a lower-case “h”) is unimportant as this command performs case-insensitive text substitution by default.

It’s as easy as that. When RefManager is done, press the <Display Report> button to get a detailed report of what RefManager did.

Now all your vector reference attachments that had a saved path containing “H:” drive (or “h:” drive) have been changed to point to “I:” drive. If it was any easier, it’d be magic.

Keep in mind the example above is a simple one. RefManager can handle all manner of complex modifications, regardless of why things got all messed up in the first place.

Have you ever spent hours making repetitive changes to some text throughout hundreds of design files?
The need to find and replace various pieces of text throughout a set of design files is something that happens all the time for any number of reasons. Whether it’s making a date change on every sheet in a project or replacing the prefix on every part identification number displayed in thousands of cells throughout a large set of design files, it’s inevitable that changes will be needed. When you have to process lots of files or make lots of different changes, it can be time-consuming, tedious and error-prone.

Say you discover that thousands of text elements scattered throughout an entire set of project files use the words “Street”, “Drive” and “Avenue”. They were all supposed to have been abbreviated but they’ve all been spelled out instead. This “oops” could leave you with a time-consuming, profit-eating ordeal. Fortunately, there’s an easy and quick way to fix this.

Below are the steps:

Open MicroStation and launch Global File Changer from the Axiom pull-down menu.
Open the Modify Text custom dialog box by selecting “Custom|Modify Text…”.
Select the “Replace Text” tab on the “Modify Text” dialog box.
The <String Format> button can be set to either “Wildcard” or “Regex”. “Regex” is short for “Regular Expression” which is an advanced way for matching specific patterns of text strings. For instance, if you wanted to find the text strings “AG22Street” and “AG33Revision” but not “AG44Ramp” you could use a regular expression that would enable you to find just the first two and exclude the last one. This allows for more sophisticated search and replace functions to be performed in a single operation. For this example, we will just use “Wildcard”.

The “Replace Text” tab gives you the ability to set multiple search strings and their replacement values.

Enter the text value you are searching for in the “Search String” field and what you want it replaced with in the “Replacement String” field.
Click the <Add> button to add it to the list of replacement combinations.
Repeat steps 5 and 6 for each search and replace combination you want to make.
After they are all entered, click the <OK> button and you will be prompted to save this list of changes. Save the file with any name and location you want. (This is so you can use it later if you like.)
You will be returned to Global File Changer’s main dialog box, where all you have left to do is choose the files you want to process and click the <Start> button to make the replacements you just defined to every file in the list automatically.

Just click <Start> and Global File Changer will replace every matching text element with the new replacement text in all the selected design files.

Within just a few minutes, the text replacements will be complete in all the targeted design files.

How do you quickly renumber 237 sheets?
Imagine that your project is due out on Monday. Your project team spent the weekend putting the final touches on the job. All the 237 sheets have been plotted for the final check. Everything appears to be in order and the tension is starting to ease. Then all of sudden a blood-curdling scream resonates throughout the office. The sheet numbers are wrong. The sheet total is off by one on every sheet and every sheet number higher than 17 is off by one.

Now raise your hand if you would manually open all 237 sheets to edit text? That is just how it has always been done and it works just fine as long you want to spend the entire afternoon editing text in 237 separate sheet files. If you can modify one sheet in one minute, stay on task, not get any phone calls, and not make any mistakes, then we are talking three hours and 57 minutes just to modify the text.

With Title Block Manager, you don’t have to open up each design file individually to make changes to your title blocks. Title Block Manager allows you to quickly update your design files in bulk from changes made in Excel or Access.

You can break it up and give sections to different people to hurry things along. That could make it go faster, or it could just make things worse and increase the chances for error. Let’s round it up to four man-hours just for editing the design files. I don’t remember the last time that I had four hours uninterrupted.

Fortunately, there is another option. It takes about five minutes:

Open MicroStation and start Title Block Administrator.™
With Title Block Administrator loaded, click on the <Select…> button next the “Database” field. Navigate to and select your Microsoft Excel (or Access) database.

You can quickly and easily renumber all 237 title blocks at one time.

Click on the <Edit Database> button on the Title Block Administrator main dialog box. This will open the database selected in step 2 above.
Increment the values in the “Sheet” column to accommodate the renumbering. Save and close the database.
Press the <Select > button next to the “Design Files:” field in the main Title Block Administrator dialog box. This will load the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box that allows you to select the sheet files for processing.
Set “Action:” to <Update selected files from database>. Click <Start>.
Check your e-mail, get some coffee and a few minutes later the job is complete.

Which scenario sounds better — the one that takes you four hours or the one that takes about five minutes?

Putting it all together
We have found that MicroStation users often come across more than one of the above scenarios. This is one of the reasons why we made sure that all four of the products in this article are included in MicroStation Acceleration Garage, a cost-efficient package of nearly all of Axiom’s time-saving software products and e-learning courses.

Tags: Global File Changer, MicroStation Acceleration Garage, MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, MicroStation v8i, ProjectWise, RefManager, Title Block Administrator
Posted in Articles, CAD Manager Tools, CAD User Tools, Global File Changer, RefManager, Title Block Manager | No Comments »

Tips & Tricks — Create more MicroStation screen real estate.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

By Rick Sewell
It seems that for every project that requires design work there are special menus that you have to use, certain palettes you need to keep open — not to mention the usual main menus you keep open all the time. Sometimes you cover more of your screen with menus than you do with your actual view window.

By default, MicroStation loads with the title bar at the top, a row of pull-down menus below that, then rows of docked menus (or at least one row) and finally your MicroStation View window. Did you ever notice that the row of pull-down menus usually spans across half or less than half of the MicroStation interface? You’ve got half a row of blank space after that! Seems like a bit of wasted real estate to me.

The typical user has at least one custom pull-down menu and a whole lot of space-eating menus and palettes.

Here is a great tip to get that space into use and to free up a bit more real estate for your view window.
From the main MicroStation menu, choose Workspace|Configuration. This opens the Configuration dialog box.
Along the left side, set the “Category” to “All (Alphabetical)”.
Scroll down the list of configuration variables until you find “MS_MAINMENUDOCKINGBESIDE”.
Double-click on the variable or select the name with a single data point and press the <Edit…> button. This opens the “Edit Configuration Variable” dialog box.

Use the “Edit Configuration Variable” dialog box to change the value for the MS_MAINMENUDOCKINGBESIDE variable. Changing the value to “1” (as shown here) will allow you to dock toolboxes right next to the Main Menu.

Type in the number “1” as the value.
Press the <OK> button to close the Edit Configuration Variable dialog box.

Using the secret “no mouse required” method, you can easily select all files with a “.dgn” or other extension in a folder and, optionally, all its subfolders and then add them to a list of files in one fell swoop. The list is now ready to process by many of Axiom’s software tools such as FileFixer.

Press the <OK> button to close the Configuration dialog box. You will be prompted to save the changes made. Press <Yes> to accept the changes.
Finally, close and restart MicroStation for the change to take place.Once MicroStation has been restarted, toolboxes can be docked right next to the Main Menu.

Posted in CAD Manager Tools, CAD User Tools, Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

How to Get the View Attributes Right the First Time in MicroStation Files Translated from AutoCAD

Thursday, 23 August 2012

One more translation problem simplified.

By Rick DeWitt, Axiom Senior Product Manager
In practically every translation project between AutoCAD and MicroStation, there is always something that messes things up and needs to be changed to keep the customer happy and meet the CAD standards that they require.

Figure 1. Translation Manager’s main dialog box is the starting point for ensuring all your files are translated right the first time.

One complaint I hear all the time is that the “view attributes” of the translated MicroStation design files are not set the way the MicroStation user wants them. View attributes control whether or not certain things like “Fill”, “Grid”, “Tags”, “Patterns”, “Line Styles” and “Line Weights” display. Each one of the eight MicroStation views can be set independently to display or not to display any of these items.

Making those changes and submitting files right the first time used to be both time-consuming and very difficult. But with Axiom’s Translation Manager, this is really simple. Here’s how to easily set the “view attributes”, in batch, after the files have been translated into MicroStation. This is done in Translation Manager’s post-process (things done after the files have been translated).

Updating View Attributes
Start Translation Manager and click the “Project” menu to open an existing project or create a new project and set the “Translation mode” (See Figure 1.) to translate to MicroStation V7 or V8.

Click the {Select…} button to the right of the “Which translated files do you want to process?” field and select the MicroStation files you want changed. You can pick one, hundreds or thousands of files from anywhere on your system. You can even drag and drop from Windows Explorer into the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box. (See Figure 3.)

Now click the {OK} button to complete the file selection step.

Click the {Post-process…} button on Translation Manager’s main dialog box and then select the “Modify” tab next to the “Repair” tab. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Some things such as replacing special characters, replacing the MicroStation color table or updating the view attributes have to be done after the initial translation has occurred. The Modify tab of the Post-processing dialog box is where this magic happens.

At the bottom of the “Modify” screen, turn on the checkbox labeled “Update the view attributes. (MicroStation files only)”. (See Figure 2.)

The next step is to select the MicroStation V8 seed file that has the view attributes set the way your customer wants them. You can click the {Select…} button to the right of the field to navigate to a different seed file.

With the appropriate design file selected (the seed file) click the {Get View Attributes} button. Translation Manager reads the view attributes from the selected seed file.

Figure 3. It’s easy to select which files you want to modify in the “Choose Files to Process Dialog” box. Files can be easily added or removed. You can even drag-and-drop files from anywhere on your system right into the dialog box.

To save these view attribute settings to the current project file for easy reuse, select Project | Save from the menu bar of the dialog.

Translation Manager has many other tools such as repair, compress, purge and modification that can be utilized to get your translations done right the first time. Any of these other tools can be turned on before processing begins.

Now click the {Process} button and Translation Manager will update the view attributes in all the selected MicroStation design files to match the view attributes set in the selected seed file. When finished, Translation Manager displays a completion dialog telling you what was done.

BAMMMM! You’re done.

Get Translations Done Right the First Time. Call Now!
For more information on Translation Manager or to receive a free trial version, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 3220, e-mail 3220@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com now.

Posted in Articles, CAD Manager Tools, Translation Manager | No Comments »

MicroStation can’t find these. New technology from Axiom can.

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA, USA — Axiom, the world’s most experienced third-party developer of products that make MicroStation easier, announces the release of a version of CadExplorer that goes even further beyond the powerful capabilities of MicroStation. CAD file inspection, normally a tedious and time-consuming activity, just got an overhaul and became a lot easier with the latest release of CadExplorer.

There is no tool in any version of MicroStation that can find all elements that are — or should be — within a user-specified distance of other elements. How can a MicroStation user quickly ensure that each desk cell has a chair cell within a specified number of inches or feet in all the design files in the project? How can someone easily go through hundreds of files just to find out which cables are within 20 feet of which radio towers and then export that list to Excel? What if a project contains a multi-floor building with a fire code that requires escape route maps, fire extinguishers and special doors within so many feet of elevators and stairwells? How does someone verify that the new building design meets such codes? Short of laborious, time-consuming, element-by-element measuring, these kinds of searches can only be done with CadExplorer.

“There is no other product out there that lets someone easily peer into hundreds or thousands of MicroStation files at a time and rapidly find the elements that they need to locate”, said Axiom’s Vice President of Technology, Oscar Albornoz. He continued, “Now, with the newest release of CadExplorer, we’ve gone a step further and given users the ability to locate all pairs of elements that are within a user-specified distance of each other. For example, you can locate all support pillar cells that have an electrical outlet cell within a specified distance. Not only that, it also reports those elements that do not have a certain element within the user-specified distance. In other words, you could find all the support pillar cells that don’t have an electrical outlet within your required distance. These new capabilities can be applied to any kind of graphical element (cells, text strings, lines, arcs, shapes, tags, text nodes, the whole lot). This proximity searching feature has never before been available to MicroStation users.”

Axiom reports that in addition to the newly added proximity searching feature, CadExplorer is stuffed with tools and features that go beyond anything that can be done with MicroStation alone. CadExplorer shows users virtually all the data contained in one, ten, hundreds or even thousands of design files in an easy-to-use and intuitive grid. Need to see all the cells that are being used in any project on the network and get a count of each one? A few mouse-clicks is all it takes. What are the chances of catching an odd-ball mistake before submitting the project to a client, like a misspelled level name or some text that happens to be on the wrong level? Without CadExplorer, these are virtually impossible to locate and requires someone to laboriously go through each design file, element by element and level by level. Spotting errors like misspellings or a cell that was only used once (a shoe-in for a CAD-standards violation) becomes much easier, faster and, per Mr. Albornoz, is “even kind of fun” when using CadExplorer.

How to Contact Axiom
For more information on CadExplorer or to see a free, online demonstration, call Axiom at 727-442-7774 extension 1638 or e-mail 1638@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com.

About Axiom
Axiom is the world’s most experienced developer of time-saving MicroStation software solutions and the largest third-party provider of general-purpose add-ons and e-learning for MicroStation. Axiom focuses on making MicroStation easier by creating time-saving and productivity-boosting tools based on real-world problems MicroStation users encounter. Based in Clearwater, Florida, Axiom has been developing software for MicroStation for over 20 years. MicroStation is the flagship CAD package of Bentley Systems, Incorporated of Exton, Pennsylvania.

CadExplorer, and Axiom are trademarks of Axiom. MicroStation is a registered trademark of Bentley Systems, Incorporated.

Tags: CadExplorer, MicroStation Acceleration Garage
Posted in CAD Manager Tools, CAD User Tools, Press Releases, Releases | No Comments »

Extra: Revolutionary new MicroStation technology allows proximity searching.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Axiom has just announced brand-new technology that allows MicroStation users to instantly find elements in hundreds of design files based on how close geographically the elements are to each other.

For instance, you can now instantly:

Find all text elements in all design files containing the string “gas fumes” within 8 inches of a cell named “flame”.
Find all instances of text string “Cliff” (in all design files) that don’t have a nearby “Warning Sign” cell on level “Signage”.
Find all design files that contain two or more cells named “Border”.

You can restrict the search to elements of a certain color, weight, style, font, level, model name, file name and other characteristics.

You can instantly find matches even if each element of the pair reside in different models or even in different design files (such as when you have multiple design files representing overlapping geographic areas)!

This new technology allows you to catch — instantly and in large quantities — quality control errors that could never before be easily detected.

Unfortunately, this new release came too late for us to put a full article in this issue of MicroStation Today. The amazingness and power of the new technology is difficult to fully describe in just a few words.

Tags: cad standards, CadExplorer
Posted in CAD Manager Tools, IT Tools, MST Issues | No Comments »

Tips & Tricks — Quickly and easily move elements from one level to another in all of your design files — in batch.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

By Rick Sewell

Rejected! You know the feeling. It’s the one that washes away any feeling of satisfaction you might have had when you completed and submitted that last project. In looking over the reason the project was rejected, you find out that certain elements were put on the wrong level. In fact, all of the elements on “Electric-Main” shouldn’t be there and need to be moved to “Electric-Prime”. If it was just one design file, it wouldn’t be a problem, but this project has over 500 design files! So much for dinner with the family. While the changes aren’t hard, the correction will easily eat up days. This is certainly not the most efficient use of your time — or your skills.

Lucky for MicroStation users like you, there’s a solution — Global File Changer™. Global File Changer has a built-in custom command that allows you to move — in batch — all of the elements from one level (or even multiple levels) to another level in any number of design files.

Here’s how:

Load Global File Changer from your Axiom pull-down menu.
Select “Custom | Move elements to different levels…”. This will open the “Move Elements to Different Levels” dialog box.

Figure 1. Global File Changer lets you make unlimited changes to multiple design files quickly and easily. The “Custom” menu contains a growing number of built-in commands (such as moving elements to different levels) that just cannot be done using MicroStation key-in commands.

Press the <Add> button to load the “Level Mapping Rule” dialog box.

Figure 2. The “Move Elements to Different Levels” dialog box lets you easily set up rules for moving elements from one level to another level — in batch — in just a few or in hundreds or thousands of design files.

Press the <Levels…> button next to the top field labeled “Move elements from which levels?”
This will open a dialog box that lists of all of the available levels in your active file.

Figure 3. You can choose which level or levels you want to quickly move elements from — in batch — with this super-simple interface.

In this example, we’re moving all of the elements from “Electric-Main” to another level. So, you would select “Electric-Main” and press <OK>.
Next, press <Level…> (Figure 2) which is next to the field labeled “To level:”. This will open the same “Select Levels” dialog box as in Step 4, only this time we are selecting the level that your elements are to be moved to.
For this example, you would select “Electric-Prime”, and press <OK>.
Press <OK> again on the “Level Mapping Rule” dialog box.
Now, at the “Move Elements to Different Levels” dialog box, you can see the “Source” and “Target” levels that you have selected. You can make further selections if you choose, but for this example, we’re finished.

Figure 4. Never get stuck again manually moving elements from one level to another. The “Move Elements to Different Levels” dialog box , shown here, displays the rules that you have set up for moving elements — in batch — from one level (or levels) to another level.

Press <OK> on the “Move Elements to Different Levels” dialog box.
You will be prompted to choose a location and file name for saving the instructions you just created for Global File Changer to use while processing. Do so and press <OK> to return to the main Global File Changer dialog box.
From the main Global File Changer dialog box, press <Select…>, which is next to the “Design Files:” field. This will open the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box.

Figure 5. The button makes it easy to select any number of design files that contain the elements you want to move from one level (or levels) to another level. Whether you select a few or a few hundred files, Global File Changer will process them all in batch, quickly moving your elements to the level you selected.

Here, you can browse for all of the files you need to process. There is more than one way to select your files for processing. From talking to customers, I’ve found that most users just press the “Browse for files” button. This will allow you to navigate to and select each file that should be processed. Once your files are selected, press <OK> .

Finally, press <Start> on the main Global File Changer dialog box to process your files.

After a matter of minutes the job will be complete! Your client won’t believe that you made the necessary changes in that amount of time. Now you can go back to the feeling of satisfaction of finally having the project complete.

Send us your MicroStation tips!

We will give you full credit for the tip and your peers will look at you with the reverence a MicroStation guru rightly deserves! Send your favorite MicroStation tip to MsTips@AxiomInt.com.

Tags: Global File Changer
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New release of DgnCompare now works with V8i.

Friday, 9 October 2009

DgnCompare permits users to distinctly see the differences between any two MicroStation design files. The program shows the user which elements have been added, which elements have been deleted and which elements have had only their color, weight, style or level modified from the initial version of the MicroStation file.

The latest version of DgnCompare was enhanced to work with MicroStation V8i. Additionally, the new release has an improved report output that includes element selection information.

For more information on DgnCompare or to see a free, online demonstration, call 727-442-7774 extension 1751 or request a demonstration through our website at http://AxiomInt.com/r/?h.

Tags: DgnCompare, MicroStation v8i
Posted in CAD Manager Tools, CAD User Tools, Releases | No Comments »

Finding CAD project data is fast and easy with CadExplorer.

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

CadExplorer displays your CAD data in spreadsheet-like views, making it easy to review the data. What can this do for you? Well the answer to that is contained in the article above — “New technology lets you analyze your MicroStation data in ways never before possible!” I recommend you read that article first, as it covers some of the amazing kinds of things this technology can do for you. Then come back to this article for a brief “how-to” on using it.

Figure 1. CadExplorer lets you magically ignore the boundaries between MicroStation files. With it, you can instantly find and display MicroStation models and elements from hundreds of design files in a single spreadsheet-like view!

When you first load CadExplorer, you will see your CAD project data organized by server drives, subdirectory folders, design files, models and individual MicroStation elements.

A huge, multi-row display of all elements from all project files isn’t immediately useful (information overload). No problem — CadExplorer offers several simple tools for zeroing in on the exact data you need.

For instance, let’s say you wanted to find all project design files in which one or more text elements contain a certain substring. CadExplorer easily lets you do this. Simply click on the “Elements” tab to display information about the elements in the various design files in your project. Then, move your mouse cursor over the “Element Type” column. When your mouse cursor hovers over a column heading, a little “filter” symbol displays. When you click on the filter symbol, a drop-down list of filtering options appears. Figure 2 shows how you would select text elements.

Figure 2. CadExplorer prevents information overload by allowing you to filter your results so that you can zero in on your data.

The spreadsheet-like view refreshes to display only text elements. You can then, likewise, filter the “Text” column (or any other column) to isolate the exact elements you are interested in. For example, if you wanted to isolate all instances of the text string “Drew Street”, simply hover your cursor over the “Text” column and use the filter as described above (see Figure 3).

CadExplorer’s flexible filtering lets you perform laser-precise searches, which instantly zero in on any CAD element or elements you need to see. Other columns can be filtered as well. Column filtering works exactly the same way for Elements, Models, Files, Cells, Tags, Folders and Drives — you can filter columns under any tab. Your filters can also be saved and re-used over and over.

Figure 3. After filtering your view, CadExplorer automatically refreshes and shows only the information you want.

You can define, on the fly, a customized view of your CAD data, which includes exactly and only what you need to see. Then create another custom view of your data and save it too.

Tip of the iceberg
CadExplorer provides complete details about your CAD files. Because the variety of information available is so extensive, it is not practical to include examples of everything in one article. We invite you to see a free, on-line demonstration where you can witness the full, unleashed capabilities of CadExplorer.

Posted in CAD Manager Tools, IT Tools | No Comments »