How to quickly extract cells
from a design file into a cell library
By Eiren K. Smith,
Axiom’s Vice President for Technology - www.axiomint.com
MicroStation departments sometimes
receive design files from external sources containing
cells which do not exist in their cell libraries.
Until now, getting these cells out of design files
and into cell libraries has been a manual, painstaking
process. For years, MicroStation users have been clamoring
for a means to extract every cell from a design file
and place them in a cell library automatically and
without duplicates. When I was Axiom’s Director
of Technical Support, I talked to many customers who
needed to be able to do this.
CellManager’s “Extract
feature” solves the above problem for you automatically.
The following steps demonstrate how simple it is to
do this with CellManager
- From the main CellManager dialog
box, click on <Extract…>.
- When the “Extract”
dialog box comes up, you simply tell CellManager
which design file contains the cells you want extracted
by clicking on the <Select> button next to
the “Source Design File” field. You then
select the name of a cell seed file and the name
of the new cell library you’d like to create
by clicking on the <Select> button next to
their respective fields. After you’ve filled
in the fields, press <Extract>.
CellManager will do the rest automatically. CellManager
will only extract one copy of each cell that has
the same name. CellManager gives every extracted
cell a description of “IMPORTED CELL”.
Remember: cells in design files do not contain descriptions;
MicroStation automatically removes descriptions
from library cells when they are placed in design
files.
- Click on <OK> when the
“Process complete” dialog box comes up.
More on CellManager
In addition to the above,
CellManager can do a myriad of tasks relating to managing
cells. With CellManager, you can easily.
Axiom’s CellManager simplifies
this immensely. Here’s how easy it is to do with
CellManager:
- Modify cell library cells to
conform to new CAD standards
- Do “find and replace”
text substitutions in hundreds of cells at a time
- Plot a notebook of all the cells
in a cell library complete with cell information
like name, description and more
- Quickly and easily edit cells
on the fly without dropping swtatus, modifying their
components and re-creating the cells
- Organize unwieldy cell libraries
by merging them together, transferring cells to
another library, deleting duplicate cells, rescaling
cells, changing cell names and descriptions, converting
graphic cells to point cells and vice versa.
Click here
to find out more about CellManager.
Send us your MicroStation tips!
Send us your favorite MicroStation tip
to tips@AxiomInt.com. We
will give you full credit for the tip and your peers will look
at you with the reverence a MicroStation guru rightly deserves!
« Back
