Posts Tagged ‘Global File Changer’

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Update design file settings fast!

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

How to update your entire project in minutes.

Clearwater, Florida, USA — At various times, during almost every project, it is necessary to prepare project design files for submittal to the organization or executive who authorized or is paying for the work to be done. Part of this preparation includes updating each design file’s view attributes and other design settings to make sure they meet the project’s requirements.

To make this whole process an extremely fast and easy task, Global File Changer has a custom feature called “Update Design File Settings”. This custom feature copies the settings and view attributes you want to use from an existing design file and then, based on your choices, updates all your project files to match.

To show you how simple and powerful the “Update Design File Settings” custom feature is, we will run through the procedure on a hypothetical set of 150 project design files. To keep this example brief, we will only update the “View Attributes” of these files, but the same process works for just about anything else you’ll ever need to update. “Update Design File Settings” can be used for updating any or all design file settings at the same time. This includes working resolution, global origin, color table and coordinate readout.

To begin, open a design file that has the view attributes set the way you want them for all your project files. With this design file active, load Global File Changer by selecting it from the “Axiom” pull-down menu on MicroStation’s main menu bar. From the “Custom” menu of Global File Changer, select “Manage Design File Settings|Update Design File Settings…”. This opens the “Update Design File Settings” dialog box.

The “Update Design File Settings” dialog box lets you specify the exact attributes and view or views you want to update. You can update your project’s design files in batch — hundreds or thousands at a time.

Now, select “File|New” from this dialog box. This initiates the default settings for this custom feature and unloads any previously active settings file. The next step is to select the design file that contains the standard settings we will use. Do this by clicking the <Browse…> button at the top of the dialog box and selecting the active design file. You could also select any design file that has the settings you want to use; however, for the purposes of this example, we’ll assume the active design file is the one containing all the settings set the way you need them.

Since we are only interested in the view attributes for this example, we will clear all the other categories by clicking the <Clear All Categories> button and then selecting the “View Attributes” category from the “Category” list box on the left. [Editor's note: If you are already a Global File Changer owner and your dialog box doesn't look like the one above, you should call Axiom to obtain the most recent Global File Changer update. For active maintenance holders, all updates are free.] With the “View Attributes” settings selected, click the <Select All> button. This activates all the view attribute checkboxes and selects all 8 views to update. For this example, we will only update views 1-4, so deselect views 5-8 by clicking on each of the <Views to update> buttons 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Keep in mind that each checkbox only determines whether or not we will update that view attribute based on the selected design files settings. It does not mean that we will turn that view attribute on. To see which way the view attribute will be set, for each view selected in the “Views to update” section of the dialog, click the <Display the current view attribute settings> button.

When you are done creating your settings, click the <OK> button at the bottom of the dialog box. This opens a “Save As” dialog box so you can save these settings to a file that can be reused at a later time. In this example, we will name the file “ViewAttributes.dsu”. After saving the filename, the “Update Design File Settings” dialog will close and the custom key-in command Global File Changer uses to update settings will be loaded by default into the “Key-in file:” field of the main dialog box.

Global File Changer is ready to update the settings on all 150 design files in the project — in one processing run. Yes, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true and will happen in just a few minutes too.

The last steps are to simply tell Global File Changer which design files to process, which models to process and the name of the report file to create. When you’re ready to process the files, simply click the <Start> button. After just a few minutes every design file you selected will have the correct view attributes for views 1 through 4.

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Why settle for a toolkit when you could have the whole Garage?

Sunday, 7 September 2008

Finish MicroStation projects in record time.

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Axiom, the world’s most experienced developer of time-saving MicroStation solutions, announces the biggest package of time-saving MicroStation tools and e-learning courses they have ever offered.

Send your regular MicroStation to Axiom’s Garage and it will come out as Super-Station.

Most are familiar with Axiom’s MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, the popular package of Axiom’s best utilities. Axiom is taking that idea one step further with the release of MicroStation Acceleration Garage.

“I gotta tell ya’,” said Axiom’s Vice President for Technology, Oscar Albornoz, “I think Axiom senior management has lost it. I couldn’t believe this when I first heard it. They want us to roll just about every software and learning tool we have into one gigantic package at a ridiculously low price. They want me to practically give our best technology away. I don’t know how this is going to work or how long it can last. I mean you can’t do that forever.”

MicroStation Acceleration Garage will be composed of all the following products rolled into one package:

  • All the tools in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V7
  • All the tools in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for V8
  • All of Axiom’s MicroStation, GEOPAK and InRoads e-learning courses
  • LearningBay Professional Learning Management System or hosted service
  • Title Block Manager — Achieve title block consistency automatically!
  • English-to-Metric — Universal working units conversions
  • RasterDgn — Easily edit raster reference files without leaving MicroStation. In addition, Axiom is going to include some of the new products previously mentioned under the code name “Salamander”. (See the June edition of MicroStation Today). Many MicroStation users saw the prototypes at the BE. These include:
    1. Global Workspace Manager — Manage all your MicroStation workspaces without leaving your desk. (Slated for release in Fall 2008.)
    2. CadExplore Browser— Find and zoom in on any MicroStation element or model in your whole corporation instantly. (Slated for release in December 2008.)

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Tips & Tricks — Maximize your batch processing power by executing your own MicroStation macros with Global File Changer.

Sunday, 7 September 2008

It’s common to have to repeat the same task over and over in a given design file or in a series of design files. In these cases, it’s nice to have a macro recorded that will perform that repetitive action without your having to go through all the key-strokes and mouse-clicks each time to get the task done. What’s better is being able to run that macro on all your design files at the same time! This is where Global File Changer steps in.

Create your own MicroStation basic macro

  1. Open any design file.
  2. Go to Utilities|Macro|Create BASIC Macro…
  3. From the “Create Macro” dialog box, add a name in the “Name:” field and a description in the “Description:” field.

    4. You can name your macro whatever you want.

  4. Notice the “Location:” menu button at the bottom of the “Create Macro” dialog box. This shows you where the macro you are creating will be placed. The default is …workspacestandardsmacros. Using the drop-down menu, you can change it to the only other location option …workspacesystem macros. It really doesn’t matter which one you use, since by default MicroStation will see both locations.

    5. The “record” (left-hand button with a “triangle” on it), “pause” and “stop” buttons that are used when recording macros in MicroStation.

  5. Now get ready! As soon as you press <OK> on the “Create Macro” dialog box, MicroStation will start recording your every move. As soon as you’re ready, press <OK> and watch what comes up immediately after.
  6. Notice that the “Record” button (the left-hand button with a “triangle” on it) is already engaged. Walk through the actions that you’d like to have recorded for later use. If you need to pause the recording before you’ve finished, press the “Pause” button (middle button). To resume recording, simply press the “Record” button. When you’ve completed the actions you want to record, press the “Stop” button (right-hand button) which ends the recording process. Pressing “Stop” will close the recording session entirely, so don’t press it until you’re done.

How to run a MicroStation macro on all of your design files using Global File Changer

  1. Create a text file and call it whatever you want, but change the “txt” extension to “key”.
  2. You only need one line in the file. The format is:

    macro (macro name)

    The word “macro” followed by a space, followed by the name of the macro that you created earlier. Example: If your macro were named “Superman”, it would look like this:

    macro Superman
  3. Save and close the text file.
  4. Load Global File Changer from your Axiom pull-down menu.
  5. To select which files to process, press the <Select…> button next to the “Design Files:” field. This will open up the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box.
  6. Press the “Browse for files” button and you will be able to navigate to and select the files you want to process. Press <OK> to get back to the main Global File Changer dialog box.
  7. Press the <Select…> button next to the “Key-in File:” field. This will allow you to navigate to and select the key file that you made earlier. Press <Open> to return to the main Global File Changer dialog box.

    8. The Global File Changer interface lets you decide what to do and which files to do it to.

  8. The “Report File:” field is unimportant for processing, but it needs to have a valid path and file name.
  9. Press <Start> to process your files.

You should now see the fruits of your macro executed! What was recorded earlier should now have replayed in your MicroStation environment for every file processed by Global File Changer.

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Saving time, saving money and getting the job done

Saturday, 7 June 2008

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Maybe you’ve heard stories of Axiom’s time-saving MicroStation utilities salvaging the “unsalvageable” design file, or completing 200 man-hours of work in a matter of minutes.

Making MicroStation work easier, faster and more efficiently puts more money in the bank and more time in your weekend. Isn’t that where they belong?

Now it’s time to hear it straight from the individual owners of MicroStation Productivity Toolkit:

Doing weeks of work in three hours
“Last week I was asked to ‘convert’ approximately 200 drawings from an existing design for re-use in a new project. The task required all existing reference and mark numbers on all drawings be re-mapped to new project numbers, including a few commonly used permutations.

“Naturally, the project manager had left it to the last minute to assign this task, and was worried that he wouldn’t achieve the first submission date — especially after he’d unsuccessfully tried to find and replace the numbers manually in a trial-run of ten drawings.

“He was skeptical when I told him I could do all of them this afternoon if he wanted. All I required was an Excel spreadsheet with the old and new numbers. “Once I had the spreadsheet, it took me 30 minutes to re-format the data for Global File Changer to import, and a couple of hours for it to process all 200 drawings — less than three hours in all. To do this manually would probably have taken us weeks!

“Now, instead of being slightly behind schedule, his project is a few weeks ahead of schedule!

“This is just one example of the many tasks I’ve been able to use MicroStation Productivity Toolkit for — I highly recommend it for any organization processing large numbers of DGNs or DWGs.” C.A.

Increasing productivity with no side-effects
“Just to let you know, it is working perfectly. Thanks for your help.

“The replace cell is also working fine, it’s impressive to see that the cells update without losing the tag values.

“Most often with MicroStation, I find that something else goes wrong when trying to fix another [problem] or that the fix available is limited in scope or incomplete by nature.

“It is quite amazing how Axiom tools can handle all the oddities and offer perfect solutions without side effects.” M.B.

Doing the work of six draftsmen in three hours
“I love it! It’s very easy to use. I did the work of six draftsmen in three hours. I saved 15 to 16 hours of work. This tool can be used so many ways. I want to get it for my whole department. I really, really like this tool. And I got excellent help down there [at Axiom]. I called in and they helped me a lot. You have a good team down there. We also use FileFixer all the time, everyone does.” D.D.

Meeting (or beating) project deadlines
“I want to thank you and your staff for your exceptional service in getting the V7 and V8 Office Importer to me at the drop of a hat. It made a big difference and the job went out on time. Great tool. “Thank you for all of your efforts and I will be in touch.” R.O.

Making translations from MicroStation to AutoCAD a cakewalk
“The majority of our projects have AutoCAD deliverables and have to be translated from USTN [MicroStation] to AutoCAD. We could never accomplish this without the Axiom Toolkit. Can’t do without it.” D.D.

Handling messed up design files before it’s too late
“We mainly use the FileFixer product, and we use it to fix corrupt files and to make sure files are clean when we send them out of the office. I can not measure the financial savings of the product has given us, but I can say that it has saved us time when fixing corrupt files. This can be much quicker than retrieving from our archives.” J.H.

Making MicroStation work easier
“We use the Office Importer and RefManager very often. Even if those two products were the only tools used, I would be totally satisfied.” D.L

Changing 1,300 reference attachments at once
“Thank you very much for your time… I now love RefManager. I wasn’t looking forward to changing 1,300 reference attachments manually.” C.S.

Changing hundreds of drawings in two minutes
“I changed 241 drawings in about two minutes! Thanks!” D.W.

Fixing misbehaving design files
“We have utilized the Axiom tools set since [MicroStation] version SE and are happy with the results. Although we do not use it on a daily basis, we have used it most often for fixing designs that exhibit bad behavior and RefManager for fixing reference file attachment locations, aliases and settings.” J.L.

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How to win the war on MicroStation terror

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

MicroStation users overcome fearsome productivity barriers!

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Have you ever encountered a situation that made you want to send an SOS?

  • You’re in the trenches. 250 design files and their reference files must be submitted tomorrow and you notice all the links to the reference file attachments are broken.
  • You think you are done and notice that your client’s company name is misspelled in 300 design files.
  • After taking hours to import a spreadsheet containing the costs of all the materials involved in a project, you discover the spreadsheet has been updated and has almost completely changed. Now you have to go back and re-import!
  • You are ready to submit the design file to your client. Suddenly the system crashes and an error message comes in: “Unable to open design file. Please contact your local site administrator blah blah blah…”

Should you send up the white flag? No — you call Axiom.

Our goal, at Axiom, is to help you win the war against MicroStation production barriers. We want to help you handle MicroStation problems, save time and meet your project deadlines. Find out how others have dealt with missed deadlines, late nights, lost weekends and upset clients. In this article, we share some of our all-time favorite war stories with you.

How to save time, meet deadlines and look like a MicroStation genius as you easily handle everything that comes your way.
The tedium of repetitive manipulation of design files ties up valuable resources, consumes man-hours and devours project profits. With the tools in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, expensive, time-consuming tasks can be a thing of the past.

Here’s what a few of our clients wanted you to know:

“Last week I was asked to convert 200 drawings from an existing design for re-use in a new project. The task required all existing references and mark numbers on all drawings be re-mapped to new project numbers. The project manager was worried that this would not be achieved by the first submission date, especially after a manual trial run of ten drawings. He was skeptical when I told him I could do all of them in one afternoon if he wanted. It took a couple of hours for Global File Changer to automatically process all 200 files, most of which time I was still productive doing other tasks. To do this manually would have taken weeks. Instead of being behind schedule, the project is a few weeks ahead of schedule!” C.A.

“[Before Microsoft Office Importer] there was a lot of time being wasted. We used to have to bring in spreadsheets one column at a time. Instead of wasting about an hour per revision, I used Microsoft Office Importer and handled the problem in four clicks of a mouse.” C.M.

“We recently had thousands of reference files that got messed up and would have taken at least two weeks to fix. RefManager fixed them automatically in four hours.” L.C.

“I now love RefManager! I wasn’t looking forward to changing 1300 reference file attachments manually.” C.S.

MicroStation quality of life
You can spare yourself the worry and aggravation of not having the tools you need to get the job done, by just having Toolkit ready in your arsenal. Our clients share how the versatility of MicroStation Productivity Toolkit relieves project anxiety:

“We started using Microsoft Office Importer on one of our larger projects and some of the Product Managers liked it so much that they started using it for the index and summaries of a lot of our smaller projects.” S.K.

“I use the tools in Toolkit every day and it’s invaluable. A problem will come up and I’ll say, ‘I bet we can solve that with Toolkit’, and we usually do.” L.C.
“Do yourself a favor and buy MicroStation Productivity Toolkit.” B. M.

Trouble getting everyone doing it right?
MicroStation Productivity Toolkit applications can be used to ensure project quality and standards — while still meeting deadlines. By submitting error-free designs on time, and meeting or exceeding your customer’s expectations, you’ll impress them and secure future business. SpecChecker (part of MicroStation Productivity Toolkit) is particularly handy for automating quality assurance checks and repairs. Here are some examples from MicroStation Productivity Toolkit owners:

“Using FileFixer and SpecChecker we are able to stop problems before they affect our schedules.” D.H.

“I’ve used SpecChecker to reorganize the symbology of elements in many of our design files. This saves me 85% of the work I would have had to do myself!” F.L.

“When dealing with lots of CAD files like I do, I don’t know how I could check all of them if I didn’t have SpecChecker.” S.A.

Save money and increase profits.
There is no better evidence of the cost-effectiveness of MicroStation Productivity Toolkit than the results owners achieve with it. MicroStation Productivity Toolkit owners explain:

“My company has a corporate Bentley license (about 30 sites) and this office was the first one to acquire Microsoft Office Importer. Every chance I get, I tell the other sites that it works and that within the first week, it paid for itself.” S.C.

“When it comes to the purchase of additional licenses of MicroStation Productivity Toolkit, money is not an issue. My guys rave about Axiom tools. Just the other day, we handled 6,000 design files with RefManager and it saved us an incredible amount of time.” M.E.

“I love FileFixer. It saves me many, many man-hours!” M.K.

“FileFixer alone makes MicroStation Productivity Toolkit worth it!” R.S.

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Trains keep a rollin'!

Friday, 7 March 2008

On track with Gerard Hall of Scott Wilson Railways

London, United Kingdom — As CADD/EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) Manager for Scott Wilson Railways, Gerard Hall is responsible for managing and supporting the CADD and EDMS systems of one of the top ten largest engineering consultancy firms in the United Kingdom. He talked with us recently about some major rail projects, including transportation preparation for the 2012 Olympics in London.

Gerard Hall uses FileFixer once a week.

MicroStation Today: What are some of the projects you have been working on?
Gerard: One major project is the London Crossrail. This £16 billion project includes the planned construction of a brand-new rail link across London from Maidenhead and Heathrow Airport in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The railway will utilize existing infrastructure on the western and eastern surface (above-ground) sections of the London Crossrail, coupled with a brand-new tunneled section beneath central London, to link major existing Underground (subway) and National Rail stations. High-frequency train service will serve all stations within this central zone. Scott Wilson Railways has been one of the significant players in developing the Crossrail project in its current form. In addition, Scott Wilson has been awarded a contract as a multi-disciplinary consultant for the London Crossrail surface routes west and northeast.

Another big venture is the East London Line Project. Phase one of this £900 million project will form a key part of the transport strategy for the 2012 Olympics, incorporating an extension to the south via the London Bridge branch of the Brighton Main Line, allowing trains to run through to West Croydon and Crystal Palace. Scott Wilson will provide all structural engineering for the new, refurbished and extended track structures, including the architectural design of all stations which includes the Dalston Junction remodeling.

MST: With all that going on, what are some of the problems you have encountered?
Gerard: We are finding that more often, clients require the original design files, to support the delivered hard copy or PDF. These files, quite rightly, must be supplied such that they conform to project standards for collaboration purposes. Typical requirements include specific settings for reference files, such as “locate” and “snap” turned on, and making sure that only final, deliverable reference files are attached. Also, the reference file name must not include any file path.

Apart from design file settings, we also need to check for departures from standards, such as changes to global origin, elements drawn outside the limits of the project grid, non-standard text and dimension styles, non-standard levels, elements that are on incorrect levels and so on.

So, for whatever reason, it is not possible to maintain the design files in a “to standard” condition while in they’re in design development, be it for purposes of efficiency or user preference. From the point of view of delivery, it must be considered that all files, in some way, do not conform to standards.

We first check the files while in their design development using SpecChecker to both affect a partial fix and generate a summary report which is returned to the file owner for correction.

Then for larger projects, where there can be up to a thousand files in each delivery, we use Axiom’s MicroStation Productivity Toolkit in a series of batch processes to cleanse the files prior to issue. RefManager is used to ensure that “locate” and “snap” are turned on, that all reference files are detached from models and that the ProjectWise file path is removed from the filename. We also use Global File Changer to copy the design file settings from the project seed file into the batch of project files.

We haven’t measured the overall time saved, but typically a batch of 50 design files is processed in around an hour, using Global File Changer, compared with manually checking each file at 20 to 30 minutes per file. Anyone can do the math.

As part of our day-to-day support to the CADD teams, about once a week we are asked to recover a file from back-up because the original file has become corrupt and unusable. More often than not, this is not necessary, as FileFixer either completely fixes the file or recovers enough design data that the file can be re-used. This way, the designer gets the file back in a quarter of an hour or so, as opposed to the one to three days that it takes to retrieve a file from back-up. This is much better than the last resort – and the bane of every draftsman – having to draw the same design twice.

Just recently, I have become aware that virtually all design files have some problem that needs fixing. It may or may not need an immediate fix, but as matter of course, all files will need to be fixed prior to being made available to the users.

MST: How did you get started in CAD?
Gerard: I’ve been in civil and structural engineering since 1979 as a draftsman. From 1988, I have been primarily involved in the rail industry, specializing in bridge design. In 2000, I changed tack and since then have been working in coordination and management roles. Since 1981, CAD has played a significant role in my career. For five years, I worked on Scott Wilson’s own in-house system, but since 1990 I have been utilizing the more “industry standard” systems.

MST: As busy as you must be, do you have time for anything else?
Gerard: Outside of work, I enjoy playing a lot of sports. My main passion was rugby – but alas, the body is no longer willing. So now most Saturdays are spent playing golf, which although less physical, is no less competitive. The frustrations of the week are now taken out on the green, instead of on the rugby pitch. [Editor's note: "Pitch" is a British term for a ball field.]
I have been married for twenty years and have two children. As any parent of teenagers will concur, your time is no longer your own. Though, naturally, I would not wish it any other way.

MST: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
Gerard: I’d like to think that I’ll be working in a similar role and still have the enthusiasm and appetite that I do now, but not with quite so many working hours.

MST: What’s a book you wish you’d written?
Gerard: I’m never without a book on the go, non-fiction or novel. The book I would most like to have written, I have yet to read. Recently, I read a biography on Chaucer. His Canterbury Tales is recognized as being the first work of literature in English, at a time when all other written material was in either Latin or French.

On Saturdays, you will find Gerard on the green.

MST: If you could trade places with anyone for just one day, who would it be?
Gerard: Tiger Woods. Just so I know what it’s like to hit a golf ball properly.

MST: What do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Gerard: I don’t believe that there is much more that can be added to the existing CAD platforms so my best guess is that there will need to be changes in the way that we share data.

In the UK, our infrastructure has been underfunded for many years. This is now changing, and a large amount of investment is being pumped in, especially into rail projects. This, coupled with the large number of civil/structural CAD designers nearing retirement and not enough school-leavers taking their place, has put a huge demand on these resources. Consulting engineers are now setting up design offices overseas and using local labor for the engineering design and drawing. With this comes the problem of file sharing. We have to become smarter in the way that this is managed. By “smarter”, I mean that there should ideally be only one file, which can be accessed by all, rather than having multiple copies that are held on local area networks, CDs, e-mail, local C: drives, etc.

And, by “one file”, I mean that by the efficient setup of caching servers and local caching, there will be little need to drag the entire file all over the world, taking up bandwidth. However, when a file does change, delta file technology facilitates this by transferring only the part of the file that has changed. [Editor's note: "Delta file technology" is a technology which analyzes changes in content between two versions of the same file.]

So I think that we will see a blossoming of project collaboration software using delta technology for the file sharing.

MST: Thanks, Gerard.

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Tips & Tricks — Update your levels to match new V8 standards: Part III.

Friday, 7 March 2008

By Rick Sewell
In last month’s issue of MicroStation Today, you saw how to update the level table in any number of your design files using a CSV file. The CSV contained level and symbology definitions as they were defined in the source design file of your choice. You now have all of your levels exactly as they were defined in your source design file.

When you update your design file level tables with the CSV file, in most cases you are actually defining new levels. Although you now have perfect levels, more than likely you still have a bunch of elements on the old levels. By “old levels”, we simply mean the levels that you were using before you updated your file(s) with the new perfect levels. So, the next step is to get your elements from the old levels to the new levels.

How to move your elements to their new levels, using only MicroStation
This is the usual method for updating the levels of an individual design file using a CSV file:

  1. Load MicroStation and open a design file that contains both the old and the new levels.
  2. Go to Edit|Select By Attributes.

    3. The “Select By Attributes” dialog box is really handy for selecting a group of elements, based on some commonality.

  3. All of the levels in the file will be listed in the “Select By Attributes” dialog box. Highlight the old level and press the button. This will select all of the elements on the old level.
  4. Close the “Select By Attributes” dialog box.
  5. You will be prompted with an “Alert” dialog box. Press so that the elements you selected stay selected.
  6. Select the “Change Element Attributes” tool from the MicroStation Main toolbar.
  7. Toggle on the “Level:” option and select the new level that you want your elements to be assigned to, from the pull-down menu.
  8. Data-click in the design plane and the selected elements will be assigned to the level you have chosen.

The “Change Element Attributes” dialog box gives you the ability to change selected elements.

This works okay, provided every design file already has the new level in it. However, when you have to process hundreds or thousands of elements in a hundred or more design files (or even just a couple dozen files), you are still talking a heck of a lot of time.

How to move your elements to their new levels, using Global File Changer
This method allows you to move all of the elements from one or more levels to another level in multiple design files in one shot.

  1. Load MicroStation and open a design file that contains both the old and the new levels.
  2. Load Global File Changer from your Axiom pull-down menu.
  3. From the Global File Changer main dialog box choose Custom|Move level.

    4. Global File Changer has a number of custom commands derived directly from customer requests.

    The “Move Level” level command allows you to move all elements from one level to another.

  4. Click to load the “Level Mapping Rule” dialog box.
  5. Click on the button labeled near the field labeled “Move elements from which levels?” and select the old level that you want to move elements from.
  6. Click on the button labeled near the field labeled “To level:” and select the new level that you want to move elements to.
  7. Click to get back to the “Move Level” dialog box. Note: You can repeat steps 5 and 6 to add more old and new level pairs for processing.
  8. When finished, click on the “Move Level” dialog box.
  9. You will be prompted to save the list of level parameters you specified as a TXT file. Navigate to a folder that is convenient for you and specify a name for this TXT file.

    10. Global File Changer allows you to save all of the parameters you set, in a text file, so that you can re-use them over and over again.

  10. Now back at the main Global File Changer dialog box, locate the field labeled “Design Files:” and click . This will bring up the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box.
  11. Type <Ctrl+O> to open the “Browse for files” dialog box. From here you can navigate to and select as many design files as you want. Select to add your selected files to the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box.

    12. The “Choose Files to Process” dialog box allows you to select any number of files to be processed in one run.

  12. Select <OK> to get back to the main Global File Changer dialog box.
  13. Select <Start> to process your files.

The result is multiple design files with elements on their new correctly assigned levels. It is fast and easy. This done in a fraction of the time that it would take using MicroStation alone.

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Tips & Tricks — Update your levels to match new V8 standards: Part II.

Thursday, 7 February 2008

By Rick Sewell, Customer Support
In last month’s issue of MicroStation Today, you saw how to create a CSV file (from a design file) that contains all of the level symbology of that design file, neatly laid out. Now see how to update levels in other design files with that CSV file.
Update your design file levels from a CSV file using only MicroStation.
This is the usual method for updating the levels of an individual design file using a CSV file:

  1. Load MicroStation and open a design file that you would like to update the levels in.
  2. Choose Settings|Level|Manager or just select the Level Manager icon on your “Primary Tools” palette to load the Level Manager dialog box.

    3. One way to load the Level Manager is from the “Primary Tools” palette.

  3. From the Level Manager dialog box choose Levels|Import.
  4. At the bottom left of the “Import Levels” dialog box is an option labeled “List Files of Type:” Choose “Excel CSV Files [*.csv]“.
  5. From the “Import Levels” dialog box navigate to and select your CSV file.

Update your design file levels from a CSV file using MicroStation and Global File Changer
This method allows you to update as many design files as you need to with a CSV file in one shot.

  1. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder where you have your CSV file.
  2. Right-click in this folder and choose New|Text Document. This will create a “New Text Document.txt”. You can leave this name or change it to anything you want. For the demonstration below, I’ve named the file “MyCSV.key” and saved it in “C:My CSV”.
  3. Open your newly created file using Notepad and enter the following two lines:
    level library import “C:My CSVMyCSV.csv” filedesign
    (Change the path and CSV file name to the path and CSV file name that you chose.)

    4. Key files allow you to run any number of MicroStation key-in commands on your files.

  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Load MicroStation and Global File Changer.

    6. With Global File Changer you can update as many files as you need with a CSV file.

  6. Next to the “Design Files:” field, press the button. This will bring up the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box. From this dialog, right-click and click on “Browse for files.”. Navigate to and select any files you want to process. (Note: I recommend running the process on a test file first to make sure it does what you want.)
  7. Next to the “Key-in File:” field press the button. Browse to and select the key file you created in step 3.
  8. The “Report File:” field is unimportant for the process but does need to be a legal path and file name.
  9. Press to process your file(s).

Using Level Manager, you can now see that the levels have been updated in your design files with perfect symbology.
Stay tuned for next month’s tip on how to move elements to your new levels.

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New Year's resolution: Save time, reduce effort and maximize profit!

Monday, 7 January 2008

By Steve Palmer
Clearwater, Florida, USA — It’s almost midnight. You are wrapping up a project submittal for an important client. MicroStation keeps crashing when you attempt to open a vital project design file. The necessity for a FileFixer midnight miracle is abundantly real to you right now. Just press FileFixer’s <Start> button and you’re back to work in three minutes.

But FileFixer’s midnight miracles, despite being dramatic and life saving, are, in truth, only part of the story. FileFixer is just one of the vital applications in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit*.

MicroStation professionals, like you, can save time, reduce effort and increase profit continuously during the entire life span of all your MicroStation projects. Keep reading to see how Toolkit can benefit you all year long.

Get MicroStation Productivity Toolkit early this year and watch your company’s profit skyrocket.

At the beginning of a new project or new project phase, use FileFixer to ensure existing design files are healthy and whole before you rely on them. Use FileFixer for V7 to search for problems in your V7 files before moving them to V8. Use FileFixer for V8 to search for problems in your V8 files before corruption stops your project dead in its tracks. FileFixer can determine which files are healthy and which are likely to cause trouble – and FileFixer can automatically generate a list of the isolated troublemakers so you can immediately and efficiently repair them. This makes for fast and easy project preparation!

When setting up a new project, use CellManager to clean up and consolidate multiple, old, non-standard cell libraries. Eliminate the non-standard junk cells. Ensure your drafting staff start off new projects with one consolidated, fully-standardized cell library. The most recent release of CellManager allows you to easily select cells from one or multiple cell libraries and display just the cells you need for your project in a concise cell-selection palette.

If you are starting a new project or new project phase, use Global File Changer to standardize each project design file’s settings (locks, snaps, coordinate readout, view attributes – you name it!). Global File Changer can replace your obsolete or non-standard cells in multiple design files with the correct, standard cells (from the standardized cell libraries you just created with CellManager).

MicroStation users around the world use RefManager when they need to update reference file folder paths after moving project files to a new server or a new folder. RefManager can make short work out of standardizing attachment level settings or display settings in one or multiple master design files. Ahh, ready to go with perfect initial layout.

Plus, all Toolkit owners with active Axiom Maintenance Plus are eligible for unlimited support and on-line training. Get your questions answered fast at the start of your project (or as questions arise during your project). The entire Axiom team is at your disposal.

Project execution with Toolkit: Continuous time-saving ease
During the course of your project, use Microsoft Office Importer to import spreadsheets, charts and Word documents into your designs with perfect formatting. The beauty of Microsoft Office Importer is the ability to automatically update design files to keep your design files synchronized with the original spreadsheets, charts and Word documents.

RefManager is indispensable for updating or replacing reference file attachments as the project design progresses. Use RefManager’s “Clone and Replace” command to add new attachments (with proper settings and correct clipping) and easily replace existing attachments with the latest revision.

Wise MicroStation managers set up automated batch runs of FileFixer to search for problems once a week as projects progress. FileFixer creates a list of files with serious problems so you can repair corrupted files before they impact your work.

DgnCompare shows the differences between two versions of a design file. What was changed in the design file since last week? Was any billable work done? Is the project progressing on schedule? What did your staff do this week? CAD Managers can use DgnCompare’s reports to identify today’s drafting errors – making it possible to train or correct project staff now (to ensure standards are maintained for current and future projects). Get your staff (or subcontractors) re-trained fast and eliminate last minute end-of-project fixes. Get it done right, from the start.

When drafting work begins, use SpecMonitor to continuously monitor adherence to CAD standards as the work is done (not after-the-fact). SpecMonitor helps ensure the work is done right the first time – it’s also great for training new project personnel!

Project finalization with Toolkit: Preparation for submittal to client
When all project work is completed, use FileFixer to perform a final “Search for Problems” to ensure you don’t submit troublemaker files to your client.

SpecChecker can eliminate tedious manual proofreading. Just fire up SpecChecker and confirm whether or not all project files comply with your CAD standards. Plus SpecChecker can automatically correct violations of your standards. Going beyond traditional quality control, SpecChecker’s analysis of your files can also be used to correct and train your own project staff (or your subcontractors).

SpecChecker can eliminate tedious manual proofreading.

Resolution kept
Now that the majority of its clients have moved to MicroStation V8, Axiom is really pouring the coals on V8 development – adding enhancements more rapidly than ever. All Toolkit owners with active maintenance receive all product updates at no additional cost! There has been no better time to own Toolkit for V8.* [Editor's note: There are 16 applications in Toolkit for V8, 22 in the Toolkit for V7.]

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Changing files across the globe – An interview with Australia’s Colin Asplin

Friday, 7 September 2007

Perth, Western Australia, Australia — CAD Administrator Colin Asplin, of Perth, Western Australia, loves a challenge. Whether it’s paragliding, video editing or re-mapping hundreds of design files, he’s willing to take the jump. He took some time away from his job at Thyssenkrupp Engineering Australia (TKEA), and paragliding, to give us a rundown of what’s happening down under

In one afternoon, Colin Asplin updated every title block, mark number, part list and reference in 200 design files.

MicroStation Today: Tell us about yourself.
Colin: I’ve worked as a draftsman for nearly ten years, mostly with TKEA, although I’ve also worked a few years for BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. [Editor's note: BHP Billiton is a global leader in the resources industry (minerals and petroleum). Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group.]

My hobbies include paragliding, photography and video editing. I’ve recently developed a keen interest in programming VBA. [Editor's note: Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language built into many popular software packages, including Microsoft Office and MicroStation, that allows automation of tasks and creation of new features.]

For those of you who don’t know TKEA, we design and manufacture industrial mining equipment. We also have a division that specializes in mineral processing equipment for clients across Australia.

It was the diversity of the work TKEA engages in, and the opportunity to learn new skills, which lured me back to work for them 12 months ago. This time it was in the role of “CADD Administrator”.

Currently, Western Australia’s resource sector is experiencing unprecedented growth due to the global demand for iron ore, driven mostly by China, with many new projects being “fast-tracked” (using existing drawings wherever possible) to take advantage of the higher commodity prices.

MST: What are some of the problems you encounter in your position?
Colin: Our clients mostly use MicroStation as their standard CADD application. Virtually all [clients] have their own, often quite stringent, set of CADD standards that we’re obliged to adhere to when submitting drawings to them.

Years of simply adopting client standards on each project, combined with a lack of our own CADD standard, has definitely reduced the efficiency and competitiveness of our drawing office in the long term. The industry boom we’re experiencing is exacerbating the problem as we struggle to reuse, or “fast-track”, our legacy data for new projects, with limited resources and time.

It was clear that for TKEA to remain competitive in the marketplace, we had to remove ourselves from exclusively using client standards in the future by developing and adopting our own set of CADD standards.

This has placed an increasingly heavy reliance on accurate and expedient conversion of drawings between CADD standards and also between platforms (MicroStation to AutoCAD for example). As CADD administrator, it falls on my shoulders to ensure these conversions are done in the most cost-efficient and timely manner.

One of the first decisions I made was to purchase [MicroStation] Productivity Toolkit. Its arsenal of ready-made tools has proven time and again to be extremely useful in all our conversions between DWG and DGN formats.

One of my favorite utilities in the Toolkit stable is Global File Changer. I’ve found it to be exceptionally versatile, and I’ve come to rely on it to do many of the conversion and re-mapping tasks that need to be done — whether they’re simple tasks performed on a single file, or complicated tasks to be executed across hundreds of files.

A recent example was a job that required the renaming and numbering of approximately 200 design files. Every title block, mark number, part list and reference number within the drawings had to be cross-referenced to new numbers and physically changed, including some common, non-standard variations. (A mark number is a numerical descriptor for a sub-assembly of parts used within a main assembly. For example, a mark number on a drawing should be written like this: MK A-084M08276. However some variations commonly found in design files include: MK A_F084M08276, MK F084M08276-A or even MK A-08276.)

In truth, the hardest part of the whole process was mapping the drawing numbers (old numbers changed to new numbers) inside a spreadsheet (that was done by the Lead Engineer). Once the original spreadsheet was given to me, I basically copied the original into separate spreadsheets and, using basic search and replace tools, created the variation lists. These were lists of the possible variations, like the variations mentioned for mark numbers earlier. I then appended them to the original spreadsheet. The rest was quite easy using Global File Changer’s built-in text replacement feature.

Admittedly, I did have to re-work the mapping table [spreadsheet] quite a bit. This included adding common number variations to the mapping table to handle the variations from our standards that might be in the design files. The number variations in the design files were just slight differences in the way numbers were written. For example, two CAD users using the same bolt in their designs, one may have written the part number with hyphens and the other may have written it without hyphens.

Then I saved the file as a simple .txt (text file) so that Global File Changer could import it.

In this job, there were 500 to 600 lines in the re-mapping [text] file that Global File Changer imported, which had to be applied to the batch of 200 design files. Within an afternoon, every number in all of the 200 plus drawings was correctly updated to reflect the new project numbers! I’ve since repeated this on two more projects, with the latest being composed entirely of DWG files, saving us literally hundreds of hours.

The project manager was surprised at how quickly the job was done. He told me that a few weeks earlier, he’d spent the best part of a day manually processing five drawings for the client presentation and the client found an error on first drawing he looked at.

I’m still finding new uses for Global File Changer. When used in conjunction with your VBA or MDL skills, there’s very little you cannot do in a short amount of time!

I’d definitely recommend Toolkit to any CADD Manager who frequently needs to edit or update large drawing sets of DGN or DWG files. I haven’t calculated the savings yet, but we achieved a positive ROI [Return on Investment] with Toolkit from practically the first project we used it on.

[Paragliding is] one of the easiest and cheapest was to fulfill the dream of flight,” says Colin Asplin.

MST: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
Colin: Okay, that’s easy. Like most people, I guess, I’d like to be financially independent enough to be able to spend my time on my passion in life. In my case, that would be paragliding!

“What’s paragliding?” you ask.

It’s probably the closest we’ll ever get to flying like a bird and, luckily, it’s also one of the easiest and cheapest ways to fulfill the dream of flight too. If you’ve ever dreamt of flying but thought you couldn’t afford to, or that it’s too hard — think again! If you’re interested, there’s a ton of info on the web, just Google “paragliding” and take a look!

You can also view a few of my videos on YouTube.

MST: What’s a book you wish you’d written?
Colin: Polymer-Layered Silicate and Silica Nanocomposites by Ke and Stroeve. Okay, I’m just kidding. There are so many books I’d love to be talented, smart or interesting enough to have written, I couldn’t possibly list them all. I guess the final book of the Harry Potter series springs to mind. I think J.K. Rowling is an incredibly gifted author.

MST: What do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Colin: It would probably be easier for me to write a bestseller (no chance!) than predict this. However, I’ve noticed a few trends, with the most notable being the global shift in engineering to embrace collaborative technologies and solutions.

This is being fuelled by a hyper-competitive global marketplace and is made possible with new web and communication technologies. The ability to manage and share data quickly between business units, customers and with downstream processing has been identified as being a critical driver of business performance, and some would argue business survival.

For CADD and engineering applications, this inevitably means a continued drive towards more “open” formats and architectures that allow data transfer between applications with minimal data loss.

An open format requires an accepted, published standard. For example, without the web standards and guidelines created by the W3C since 1994, the development and usefulness of the Internet today could not have occurred. [Editor's note: the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is an international association of organizations where member organizations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop web standards.]

I think once this occurs in the CADD industry, we’ll begin to see some exciting and truly innovative developments. Bentley has long recognized this with the excellent interoperability of DGN and DWG in MicroStation V8, and has extended this further with MicroStation XM by including Google Earth technology and support for PDF attachments.

What’s the next big thing?

Who knows, but hopefully I’ll be around in the industry long enough to see “virtual 3D”, where the engineering is done in virtual reality! Now that would be cool! Just imagine the internal debates of whether or not to go “virtual”, or stick with “traditional” 3D. It may not be as far off as we think.

As for 2D, “What’s that again?”

MST: Thanks, Colin.

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