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Posts Tagged ‘Global File Changer’
MicroStation Today — March 2010 (Volume 17, Issue 3)
Tuesday, 23 February 2010Tips & Tricks — Quickly and easily move elements from one level to another in all of your design files — in batch.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010By 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.
- Press the <Add> button to load the “Level Mapping Rule” dialog box.
- 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. - 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.
- 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 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.
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.
Figure 3. You can choose which level or levels you want to quickly move elements from — in batch — with this super-simple interface.
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.
Figure 5. The
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.
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MicroStation Today — June 2009(Volume 16, Issue 6)
Monday, 1 June 2009
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Save time and prevent a CAD standards nightmare.
Friday, 15 May 2009Part two in a series of articles on the mysteries of global origin
By Rick Dewitt
Have you ever started a project and noticed that one or more reference files didn’t seem to line up in your master files the way you expected or that the geometry you expected to be a particular size was too big or too small? In a previous issue of MicroStation Today, I wrote the first segment of an in-depth discussion on the frequently misunderstood subject of “global origins”. [Editor's note: See MicroStation Today Volume 16, Issue 3. The article can be found here] Not understanding global origin and a closely related topic, “working resolution”, can lead to a host of questions such as:
Not knowing how global origin affects your design files could result in time-consuming and costly mistakes — the kind that keep you up at night.
- What exactly is the global origin?
- What happens if you change it?
- How do you change it?
- How does it affect reference files?
- How is working resolution related?
- Does Axiom have any products that can help fix global origin and working resolution problems?
In this article, I will continue that discussion so you have an even better grasp of the subject, how it can impact your projects and what you can do if you discover the global origin is wrong in some or all your project design files.
If you ever had a time when one or more reference files didn’t line up in your master files the way you expected after attachment or the geometry appeared way too big or way too small, then you had mismatched global origin settings, working unit settings, working resolution settings or some combination of all three.
The global origin is a setting made relative to the MicroStation design plane (for 2D) or cube (for 3D) which defines where the x=0, y=0 and z=0 coordinate point is located. The global origin point, when you ask MicroStation, is defined (set) as a certain number of master units (like feet or meters) from a predefined fixed point on the design plane (or cube) along each axis. The “predefined fixed point” is set by Bentley (more on this below).
“Master units”, as you probably know, define what we will call the real world distance measurement in a design file.
For civil engineering projects, this is usually feet or meters. If you are designing circuit boards however, you would probably prefer inches or millimeters as a master unit.
“Working resolution” defines how many units of resolution are going to be used to make up a specific unit of measure like a foot or a meter. For example, if you set the units of resolution to 1,000 units per foot in a design file, then a line that is one foot long will take up ten times more design plane than a one-foot line in a design file whose units of resolution are set to 100 units per foot. So, if you attach a reference file that uses 1,000 units of resolution per foot to a master file that uses 100 units of resolution per foot, at a scale of 1.0, then a one-foot line in the reference file will look like a ten-foot line in the master file.
Because the global origin is expressed as a value in master units like feet or meters, the same point on the design plane can have a very different value when the master units of two files are different or the working resolution is different for the same distance of measure.
Combining V7 and V8 files can create unexpected problems.
In MicroStation V8, the predefined fixed point used to help locate the global origin was changed from where this point was in V7. Specifically, the predefined fixed point was moved from the lower, left-hand corner (for 2D designs) to the exact center of the design plane. What’s more, the design plane is significantly larger (about 2 million times larger) in V8 than it was in V7. For 3D designs, the predefined fixed point was moved from the lower, bottom-left corner (where it was in V7) to the precise middle of the design cube (in V8). This change has created some confusions and problems — particularly when combining MicroStation V7 design files with MicroStation V8 design files in the same project.
One example of such problems occurs with “coincident” reference file attachments. When you make a coincident reference file attachment, MicroStation orients the two design files so the design planes match up exactly. It’s important to know that the thing MicroStation matches up is the design planes, not the global origins. In projects where all the design files (including all the reference files) use the same global origin and the same working resolution, then obviously all the global origins and geometry will happen to line up as well. Unfortunately, this is not the case if the global origin or working resolution settings of a master file are different from those of an attached reference file. In this case, the geometry in the reference files will not line up as expected due to global origin differences or the size of the elements will be wrong due to differences in working resolution.
When the global origins are different between master and reference files, a coincident attachment will offset geometry just like the global origins are offset above.
For instance, let’s say that you have a hybrid project that includes V7 design files, V8 design files and maybe even AutoCAD files. If each type (V7 or V8) of MicroStation file uses a different global origin setting and the working resolution settings are different, you are going to notice reference file geometry not having the expected orientation to the master file’s coordinate system. Also, the size of the geometry from the reference file will appear wrong.
Similar to the above, if the V7 or AutoCAD files are being translated into V8 format or vice-versa, you can easily run into the same problems if the translators are not set up to handle these factors properly. Understanding global origin and working resolution and how to fix them is crucial when you are responsible for creating projects that must comply to CAD standards or if you have to define the CAD standards others must follow.
Avoiding a time-consuming nightmare
Let’s say you translate a group of files from AutoCAD to MicroStation V8 without ensuring that the translated files come into MicroStation with the required working units (such as feet or meters), resolution settings and global origin settings. Guess what? You are playing Russian roulette with your company’s potential profit on that project. It’s true you might get lucky using the default translation settings or you might have a client who isn’t picky about settings as long as the sheets plot correctly. But if you aren’t lucky and the project has to be fixed to comply with a different resolution standard and a different global origin value, you will have a time-consuming nightmare on your hands. Why? Because changing the resolution changes the “real-world” size and location of every element already in the design file and changing the global origin changes the coordinate location of every element. To get things right after designing the project, you will have to re-scale and move everything. Re-scaling and moving elements obviously affects where reference file elements are going to display in master files. If reference file attachments are clipped, the elements in the reference files, after being rescaled and moved, will almost certainly disappear outside the clipping boundary, making it necessary to fix that as well. I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.
Some solutions may not meet your CAD standards.
In MicroStation V8, Bentley added a new attachment method called “Coincident World” to help make this all a little easier for users to deal with. “Coincident World” matches the attachment’s global origin to the master file’s global origin. This is really useful when files from multiple projects — that may have different global origin settings — are used together. Using this attachment method along with the “True Scale” option (which automatically scales the attachment to compensate for differences in working units or resolution) can make combining files from different projects very simple in V8 — provided you don’t have CAD standards that forbid having different global origin settings or different working resolution settings. Unfortunately for many, a number of CAD standards still require the use of very specific global origin and working resolution settings. When those settings aren’t followed, the time-consuming nightmare mentioned above comes into play.
Because of these problems, Axiom added additional features to Global File Changer that help isolate design files with non-standard settings and provide a way to easily update those design file settings to match the standard. Global File Changer and other tools from the MicroStation Productivity Toolkit provide effective solutions that can drastically reduce the time required to fix project design files, including those created using non-standard working resolution or global origins settings.
Four problems users have with MicroStation
Friday, 15 May 2009And 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.
Tips & Tricks — How to quickly find any text string (or just about anything else) in all the design files at your entire site
Friday, 15 May 2009By Rick Sewell
Have you ever had a need to determine which of your massive set of DGN project files contained a specific text string or a particular cell or model or level? How do you handle those situations now? How much time have you lost on projects just trying to locate things? How much money do you lose on time-consuming searches?
Now you can instantly and easily locate almost any design file component in any DGN file at your entire site — and that’s just the beginning.
I routinely field calls from MicroStation users and CAD managers who are looking for ways to find a specific graphical element which they know is located somewhere in one or more of their hundreds (or thousands) of MicroStation files. Now that CadExplore Browser™ has been released, I can’t wait to tell you what can be accomplished with this powerful new technology.
Example: How to find every instance of a specific text string in all your design files (and how to modify it)
There are any number of examples I can use, but I’ve chosen this one because it represents a real-world customer request that I believe will be useful for most MicroStation users.
- Load CadExplore Browser.
- Click on the “Elements” tab.
Figure 1. In CadExplore Browser, every column has a filter button allowing limitless display possibilities for your CAD data.
- Locate the column labeled “Text”.
- Hover your mouse over the “Text” column to display the filter icon. Click the filter icon.
- Choose “(Filter Editor)”. This will display the “Filter Editor” dialog box.
- Click on “Is not blank” and set it to “abc Contains” (shown in Figure 2).
- In the “<enter a value>” field, enter the text value that you are looking for. For this example, we will search for the text string “Project X” (Figure 3).
- Press <Apply> to activate your filter.
Each row represents an instance of a given element in a design file. CadExplore Browser’s grid will refresh and display only those rows that match your filter. In this example, each row in Figure 4, represents a single instance of the text string we searched for (“Project X”) along with the name of the DGN file and model where the instance resides.
Figure 2. With CadExplore Browser, you can choose from many different filtering options to create a filter precise enough to find a needle in a haystack.
For this simple example, notice that CadExplore Browser found two design files (“Phase1.dgn” and “Phase2.dgn”) that contain instances of the text we searched for. (Six instances were found in “Phase1.dgn” and nine were found in “Phase2.dgn”)
Next we will use one of my favorite CadExplore Browser features (Grouping) to create a list of the files which contain the text which matches our filter.
Figure 3. The filter editor lets you instantly find the exact MicroStation elements you are looking for using powerful filters like the “Text Contains” filter shown here.
This results in a list that summarizes which MicroStation files contain the text you are hunting for (in this case, the text string “Project X”). No need to tediously open design files one by one to locate text! You can modify your filter to search for any other text string instantly. You can filter and group any combination of columns — so this is just a taste of the capabilities of CadExplore Browser.
Figure 4. In this example, CadExplore Browser applies the filter you defined (as shown in Figure 3) to display only those text elements which contain “Project X”, along with the name of the file and model in which each text element resides.
Now that you have your list of every design file that contains the text string “Project X”, you can do whatever you want to with it. For example, if you need to modify the selected text string, you could change every instance of it, in batch, simply by exporting the list you just created with CadExplore Browser into Microsoft Excel. By simply saving your Excel spreadsheet as a text file, you can then import it into Global File Changer™. Global File Changer can then make any change you want to every instance of your text string in those files very fast.
Figure 5. The grouping feature allows you to summarize information that is in a particular column such as the “Drive”, “Folder” or “File Name” columns. The example above shows how you would use the grouping feature to summarize the information in the “File Name” column.
There are many other things you can do too, but I’m out of space, so that will have to be the topic of another article.
Tips & Tricks — Replace text strings with Global File Changer.
Sunday, 1 February 2009By Rick Sewell
Global File Changer is exactly what it sounds like. This thing can change just about anything in your design files and fast. It is my personal favorite Axiom product due to its amazing versatility.
While it is true that Global File Changer is incredibly multifaceted, the single most utilized feature by far is its ability to change text. Global File Changer allows you to change a number of text attributes such as font, justification and size to name a few. However, the most commonly desired text-changing feature, in my experience, is the ability to replace an existing text string with a new text string. For this reason, I wanted to write it down for all to use.
Global File Changer’s main dialog box is jam-packed with goodies. Its bulk file-changing capabilities are limited only by your imagination.
Replacing text with Global File Changer
For this example, let’s say “Linkin Street” was misspelled as “Lincoln Street”.
- First, load Global File Changer from the Axiom pull-down menu.
- From the Global File Changer main dialog box, choose Custom|Modify text… and then select the “Replace Text” tab.
- In the field labeled “Search string”, enter “Lincoln”. In the field labeled “Replacement string”, enter “Linkin”.
- Since Global File Changer has the ability to process more than one set of search and replace parameters, it is necessary to confirm what you have entered into the “Search string” and “Replace string” fields. Press the <Add> button to commit your entries to the list.
- Choose File|Save As… to load the “Save Modify Text File” dialog box. Enter a name and then navigate to a convenient location to save your text change parameters. Then press <Save>.
- Press the <OK> button to return to the main Global File Changer dialog box.
- The “Key-in File:” field will automatically be filled in with the command needed to change your text, based on the parameter file you created. Ensure that the “Design Files:” field lists the files you intend to process and the “Report File:” field contains the path and file name for the report file you want created.
- Press <Start>!
Global File Changer’s Modify Text dialog box allows you to replace a text string with another text string in multiple design files at the touch of a button.
MicroStation Today — February 2009(Volume 16, Issue 2)
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Download a PDF version of this issue.
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Fight back!
Sunday, 7 December 2008How to increase your profits in a slow economy
Clearwater, Florida, USA — In a slow economy, software add-ons that consistently save dozens, hundreds or thousands of man-hours aren’t just “nice” things to have, they’re vital.
How much money are repetitive, time-consuming tasks costing you?
David Evans & Associates saves $19,596 per year by using Microsoft Office Importer. Oregon DOT saves $42,000 per year in man-hours by using FileFixer. Barone-Shultz saved just one of their clients $5,400 on just one project using CellManager, a savings of 90% of the total project cost.
Washington Group saved $16,400 using MicroStation Productivity Toolkit on just one project over one weekend and potentially saved millions of dollars in lost income. Valero Paulsboro Refinery saved an estimated $125,000 on just one project using tools included in MicroStation Acceleration Garage.
Increase profits and reduce expenses.
Axiom creates tools for CAD managers and users that not only make their jobs easier, but also help them get projects done faster. In addition, LearningBay’s e-learning courses make users more effective and efficient when using MicroStation and MicroStation products such as GEOPAK and InRoads. LearningBay’s “on demand” e-learning courses produce better results and yet are less than a quarter the cost of offsite training and less than half the cost of onsite training. What’s more, the training can be done over and over to keep skills fresh. That’s simply not possible with either onsite or offsite training without incurring additional costs.
CAD managers spread too thin
According to Robert Green’s “CAD Manager 2005 Survey”, 26% of CAD managers reported that “their number-one frustration was not having enough time to do their job well.” Surprised? Here are some other numbers from the survey:
- Only 31% of CAD managers perform their management duties full time (meaning they have other duties as well).
- 61% are in salaried positions (average base salary: $53,847, or roughly $27 per hour.
- A CAD manager supports an average of 41 CAD users.
- 16% have purchasing authority.
Cost justification
No matter how good a product or service is, you still have to explain its value to decision-makers in a language they understand: money. This is why the CAD manager has to be business savvy and where cost justification comes in handy. The below, real-life examples show savings in terms of man-hours. In each case, one or more Axiom products greatly improved the productivity of the user or users involved and saved the company large amounts of money. According to the previously mentioned survey, the average salary for CAD managers was $27 per hour. Typically, taxes, insurance, benefits, training, management, overhead and other employee-related expenses are about 20% of salary costs. Thus, the following examples use $33 per hour as the company’s cost for the employee’s time. The actual cost of each Axiom product mentioned in the following examples was only a fraction of the overall amount saved by the company by using the product. All of the products mentioned below can be purchased separately or as part of MicroStation Acceleration Garage.
Example 1
One customer needed to change 200 drawings from an existing design for re-use in a new project. The task required all existing reference numbers on all drawings be re-mapped to new project numbers. The estimated time to do this manually was approximately 80 hours. At an average of $33 per hour, total cost would have been $2,640. Using Global File Changer, the actual time spent was 3 hours at a cost of only $99. This is a savings of $2,541 or 96% on this one three-hour project.
Example 2
Another customer, who regularly uses FileFixer, comments, “FileFixer ends up saving us approximately 400 man-hours a year. We couldn’t be nearly as productive without it.” Again, applying a $33-per-hour cost to this example, this results in a $13,200 savings in man-hours each year. Keep in mind that the $13,200 is only the figure for the savings. It doesn’t even begin to take into account the extra profit from all the additional work that gets done in those 400 extra man-hours.
Example 3
Another customer states that, “whenever any MicroStation file came back from the client, our drafters would spend an average of about two hours finding and correcting the CAD standards violations. If one figures that we get about 20 files per submission sent back to us by the client, that it takes a drafter about two hours to spot and correct the violations and that there are about two to three submissions in the lifecycle of our design projects, then there are approximately 120 man-hours per project spent in corrections — time spent not earning any new revenue!” Instead of doing it the hard way, the firm now uses SpecChecker and gets the work done in five minutes instead of two hours. In dollars, that saves $3,960 in man-hours on each and every project.
Example 4
Another customer had 400 design files in a project where a non-standard set of cells was used throughout the design process. They had to replace literally thousands of instances of multiple cells throughout all 400 design files. They were looking at 330 man-hours to fix this and a late delivery of the project. However, using Global File Changer, they were able to update all 400 design files with the “Replace Cells” function in a little over three hours — only 20-minutes of which required an operator to be present. The remaining time was simply the processing time. The total time, including the processing time, was only 1% of the time the design team estimated it would have taken to make the changes by hand. They saved $10,879 just by running Global File Changer — once!
Savings plus increased production
The money saved in man-hours is only part of the picture. What these examples don’t take into account the value of the additional work that the users involved can now get done. In other words, for each hour of work that one of Axiom’s products can save a company, that hour can then be used to generate more income on another project. Free advice on increasing profits
Make the vendors vying for your budget dollars work for you. Use their resources to get your projects done faster and more accurately and don’t be afraid to try and implement new technology. Contact Axiom and schedule a no-obligation, one-on-one, online demonstration with one of our product managers to discuss how the products included in MicroStation Acceleration Garage can greatly increase your rate of production and maximize the return on your budget dollars.
The curse of the mummy’s deadline
Tuesday, 7 October 2008An interview with Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II
Cairo, Egypt — In search of an appropriate interview for the October edition of MicroStation Today, I found myself in Cairo, wandering the streets and looking for a story. A few of the locals informed me that the Egyptian Museum had a healthy collection of mummified ancient Egyptian kings, so I thought — being the Halloween issue — it couldn’t hurt to take a look.
In ancient times, missing a deadline could mean your death.
After wandering through halls laden with artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, I located Ramses II, arms crossed and with a gold mask covering his face. I kept walking and a few displays down, there was another mummy in an open casket, a roll of papyrus and ancient Egyptian pen laid at his feet.
Intrigued, I picked up the papyrus and was startled to discover… it held blueprints for a pyramid! If I could interview this chap, the article would fit right into the October edition! I picked up the pen and thought for a bit. My eyes darted to the inscribed plate in front of the casket: “Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II”. Suddenly, the mummy started to move!
MicroStation Today: My god!
Romulus III: Aaaaauuuuuuuurrrrrgggghhhhh! Who disturbs my slumber?!
MST: Um… Er, hello. That would be me. I’m a reporter for the monthly periodical called MicroStation Today. It’s a CAD-related magazine… MicroStation specifically. I was wondering, could I do an interview on you? I’m sure our readers would love to hear about your experiences as an architect in ancient Egypt!
Romulus III: Hmmmm… As you have taken my drafting pen, you have incurred the wrath of the dreaded Romulus III — Chief Architect for Ramses II. This, I cannot forgive.
MST: What if I were to replace the pen immediately after we do our interview? No harm, no foul right?
Romulus III: Well, I suppose that would be alright. It is a tad drab just sleeping all the time. What have you got?
MST: Well, you must have a pretty interesting story on how you began as an architect. Can you tell us about that?
Rumulus III: I started off as a mason [someone who builds with cement and materials like stone and brick] when I was 15, carving stones and such. There was a complete lack of wood, so most of our buildings were built of stone, which was just as well, I heard that a lot of them are still standing today. You can’t say that about most structures that old. Anyhow, I wasn’t that fond of manual labor, so I apprenticed under a master architect, and he taught me a lot. By the time I turned 24, I was Ramses’ Chief Architect. I had a lot of respect, but also a lot of responsibilities. Structure design is no walk-in-the-park, let me tell you. I would have given anything for some way to speed it up and handle the problems that kept popping up.
MST: You know they have something like that now, it’s called “MicroStation”. It’s a Computer-Aided-Design software program. It lets you design entire structures with pinpoint accuracy and much faster than traditional pen and papyrus.
Romulus III: That’s amazing! And there are no problems with it?
MST: Sometimes there are, but there are tools like FileFixer and Title Block Manager that help sort those out quickly and painlessly.
Romulus III: Wow! Sounds like those would have been life-savers!
MST: Yeah, I know.
Romulus III: I don’t think you do! I was executed for not finishing the designs for Ramses’ “Thebes Temple Remodeling Project” in time! That man was an insane multi-tasker! He wanted all existing monuments to reflect his divine nature and power, so we had to come up with plans to redesign dozens of existing temples in his image, and he wanted it done in a month!
MST: You could have done it in a week with MicroStation and Toolkit.
Romulus III: Exactly! Now you know what I mean when I say “life-savers”. Anyhow, at least I was given the gift of eternal life by mummification. He must have liked me to some degree.
MST: Yeah… Next question: What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?
Romulus III: The Ramesseum, hands down. [Editor's note: The Ramesseum is a memorial temple that was built by Pharaoh Ramses II in 13th century B.C. It currently lies in ruins across the Nile river from the city of Luxor.] There were three statues of the man [Ramses II], one of them weighed over 1,000 tonnes! It was preceded by two courts and had giant pillars, huge walls, the works! I am definitely proud of that one. I heard it’s not doing so well today though. Pity.
MST: What is your favorite movie?
Romulus III: Well, you’d think that I don’t watch TV, stuck here in my display. However, the museum guard booth is just down the hall a bit, as you can see, and last year one of the guys (“Bakari”, I think his name is) brought his daughter to work. She sat in there and watched a cartoon called “The Prince of Egypt”. Excellent film, very true-to-life stuff. I pulled my wrapping down a bit from over my eyes and watched the whole thing. I laughed so hard, I started coughing up dust!
MST: Yeah, I saw it too, good stuff. Now, what do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Romulus III: I had always thought it would be wonderful if they made a special table with instruments attached that helped you measure distances and draw perfect lines and curves on your papyrus.
MST: Yeah, that’s already been done. It’s called a “drafting table”.
Romulus III: Ah, I see. Well… then how about some sort of magic box that can hold thousands and thousands of designs. Maybe even simulate the designing process — allowing you to draw faster and more accurately!
MST: Yeah, we’ve got that too. It’s called a “computer”. And the “Computer-Aided-Design software” I told you about earlier is what simulates the designing process.
Romulus III: So that’s what a computer is? Fantastic! I heard you say “computer” earlier, but I just ignored it. Didn’t want to tie you up for too long here. Anyhow… So you’ve already got that, huh? Okay, well I’m sure there are things that could be improved, like, say a guy needs to make bulk changes to all of his designs? Changing all circles to squares or making all of a certain type of line thicker, that would be a “next-big-thing” wouldn’t it?
MST: We’ve got that too, it’s called Global File Changer and it’s part of Axiom’s Toolkit.
Romulus III: What about when something goes wrong and you can’t open your designs?
MST: FileFixer handles that. It’s also in Toolkit.
Romulus III: Well you know what? You just may have asked the wrong mummy!
MST: That very well may be the case, Romulus. I’ve got to catch a flight in about half-an-hour. Are you ready for me to replace the pen?
Romulus III: (Yawn) Yes, I think so. I’m growing rather sleepy. This is the most excitement I’ve had in the last 700 years!
Romulus crossed his arms and laid back in his display case. I placed the pen and the papyrus back at his feet and made my way outside to flag down a cab. “The Editor is not going to believe this,” I thought, clutching my notebook to my chest. I hopped in the cab and said, “To Cairo International Airport! And step on it!”
