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Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft Office Importer’
MicroStation Today — October 2009 (Volume 16, Issue 10)
Wednesday, 14 October 2009MicroStation Today — June 2009(Volume 16, Issue 6)
Monday, 1 June 2009
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Microsoft Office Importer adds ProjectWise support.
Friday, 15 May 2009By Eiren Smith
What do MicroStation users do if they want to easily import large spreadsheets and word processing data into their design files with perfect formatting? What if they want to maintain a link to the original spreadsheet so that if something changes in the spreadsheet, the design file can be easily — interactively or automatically — updated? What if they use ProjectWise?
Microsoft Office Importer — which now talks to ProjectWise — lets you import word processing and spreadsheet data into your design files with formatting you control.
I’m a little tight on space this month so I’ll keep it brief. I want to tell you about Microsoft Office Importer’s brand-new and most excellent support for Bentley ProjectWise.
You all know what Microsoft Office Importer is, right? It’s Axiom’s super-popular tool for bringing data from Excel spreadsheets and Word documents into MicroStation with perfect formatting with a link to the source spreadsheet or document. Users open the spreadsheet or document, copy what they want to the clipboard, then jump over to MicroStation and paste that data, using the “Paste Clipboard Contents” button on Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar. In addition to bringing the data in with perfect formatting, it provides tons of options so you can have things formatted exactly the way you want. Microsoft Office Importer also provides a link from that design file back to the spreadsheet or document so that pasted data in the design file can be easily (interactively or automatically) updated anytime in the future if the source spreadsheet or document file changes.
Enter ProjectWise
Microsoft Office Importer has long made all the above extremely easy to do, but (until now) wasn’t able to communicate with ProjectWise. So when Microsoft Office Importer would go to see if the spreadsheet or document had changed, that spreadsheet or document had to be in the exact same location it was when it was originally pasted into that design file. This meant two things:
- The user had to check that spreadsheet or document out of ProjectWise before Microsoft Office Importer could check to see if the design file needed to be updated from that spreadsheet or document; and
- The user had to check the spreadsheet or document out to exactly the same folder as it was checked out to the first time it was pasted into that design file, as that’s where Microsoft Office Importer was going to look for it at update time.
All this was because Microsoft Office Importer simply didn’t talk to ProjectWise. I’m happy to report that that’s now totally handled. Now, when Microsoft Office Importer needs to see if the design file needs to be updated, Microsoft Office Importer can talk to ProjectWise and check out any needed files automatically. This means that Microsoft Office Importer updates of spreadsheet and document data in design files are now totally workable for ProjectWise users.
As I mentioned above, I’m tight on space this month. Check back in the future for a detailed description of how this all works. But don’t let that keep you from trying out the new version of Microsoft Office Importer with ProjectWise support for yourself. It’s so easy to use, you really don’t need to know anything that non-ProjectWise Microsoft Office Importer users don’t know. Take it for a spin!
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 — Import Microsoft Office text into MicroStation without messing up the text height.
Saturday, 7 March 2009By Rick Sewell
Do your Excel spreadsheets ever import into MicroStation with the right text height? The answer from many MicroStation users across the country is a resounding “No!” Thus, these MicroStation users are forced to either manually type their text using MicroStation’s “Place Text” tool with the correct text height or paste the text using one of MicroStation’s “Paste Special” options (which does not even paste your text correctly formatted unless you paste it as a raster image which can never be edited) and then scale it using MicroStation’s “Scale” tool. This process could take hours or even days depending on the amount of text that needs to be added to a design file.
Integrating Microsoft Office Importer into your workflow allows you to solve the problem of incorrect text height by allowing you to set the correct text height in the Microsoft Office Importer Settings dialog box. Once that’s done, you can import spreadsheet and word processing data into MicroStation with perfect formatting.
MicroStation users frequently need to have text at an exact height when placed into a MicroStation design file. That’s one reason why thousands of MicroStation users have adopted Microsoft Office Importer as their tool of choice for importing Excel spreadsheets and Word documents into MicroStation. Microsoft Office Importer allows you to set, among other things, the height of the text to be placed when you import spreadsheet and word processing data into MicroStation with perfect formatting.
How does it work?
Microsoft Office Importer looks at the point size of the font of the text in the source file (an Excel spreadsheet, for example) and assigns a user-defined number of MicroStation master units to each point. Larger or smaller text is then scaled based on the same ratio of number of master units per point of font size. For example, if you set Microsoft Office Importer so that each point of text size is equal to 0.5 master units, your ten-point text from a spreadsheet would be imported into MicroStation as five master units tall. If you were importing 20-point text, it would come into MicroStation as double that or ten master units tall.
Figure 1: With Microsoft Office Importer, when you import text from your spreadsheet, you can set it up so it will come in at the exact height you want, every time!
How to set text height and width
In order for your text to look right, you have to address its width too. It’s easy to set this in Microsoft Office Importer. Just follow the steps below. For this example, let’s say that you wanted text to come in at a height of 0.5 master units and you wanted the text width to be 80% of the height. [Note: By default, Microsoft Office Importer sets the width of text to be 80% of the height. This is a fairly common ratio in the world of font-sizing. However you can change that ratio to whatever you like (see below).] The height that you specify will be the height that the tallest letter (text character) will be when placed in the design file. Usually this height is the same as the height of a capitalized letter.
Figure 2: If Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar is not open, select “Axiom | Microsoft Office Importer | Load Microsoft Office Importer for V8″ (or “V7″ if you are using V7).
- Push Microsoft Office Importer’s <Settings> button on Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar. The <Settings> button is the one on the far right.
- Then choose the “Size” tab.
- If the height-to-width ratio is unlocked, click on the <lock> icon to lock the height-to-width ratio. Notice that, by default, it is set to a height of “1.0″ and a width of “0.8″ (as shown in Figure 4). By locking it at this ratio, any number you type in for height will cause the width value to change so that it’s 80% of the height. [By the way, if you ever want a different height-width ratio, just unlock it, change the values in the height and width fields to whatever you want, then re-lock.]
- Next, type “0.5″ in the “Height” field. Because the height-to-width ratio was locked at a height of “1.0″ and a width of “0.8″, the width will automatically change to “0.4″ (80% of the new height) as soon as you press on the <Update> button.
- Press the <Update> button for the changes to become active.
- These settings will affect any new Microsoft Office Importer pastes in future sessions of MicroStation as long as you save the settings with “File | Save Settings” from the Microsoft Office Importer Settings dialog box.
- Press the <OK> button on the dialog box.
Figure 3: On the “Size” tab of the Microsoft Office Importer Settings dialog box, you can select the exact height-to-width ratio that you want text to be when you place it into your design file.
Figure 4: If the height-to-width–ratio lock icon is in the unlocked position (as depicted above), then click on it to lock it if you want to maintain the same height-to-width ratio of the height and width shown in the dialog box.
Figure 5: Once you have clicked on the <Update> button, any new Microsoft Office Importer pastes will have the height-to-width ratio you specified.
That’s it! You have just set your text height and width to exactly what you want. Now do all your text imports with Microsoft Office Importer and all your text will have perfect formatting.
MicroStation Today — March 2009(Volume 16, Issue 3)
Sunday, 1 March 2009
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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.
Will true interoperability change the CAD industry? Melcher Mack, CAD Manager for Bergmann Associates, talks about 3D design, multiple disciplines and the future of CAD.
Friday, 7 November 2008Rochester, New York, USA — Bergmann Associates CAD Manager, Melcher Mack, has been in the CAD industry for over ten years. He gave us some insights on changes he’s seen in the industry as well as his prediction on where it is going.
Melcher Mack — on a crusade for true BIM
MicroStation Today: What is your background?
Melcher: In high school, I took an architectural elective course where I worked on designing my dream house. Later, I went to college for Marketing Management but found I was more interested in designing things than selling them. So, I went back for Mechanical Technology.
MST: I’m sure Bergmann Associates was happy about that. What type of work does your firm do?
Melcher: Bergmann Associates has been around since 1980. We offer an extensive range of engineering, architecture, planning and design services for commercial, institutional, retail, education and industrial leaders as well as agencies at all levels of government.
MST: What have been some highlights for you personally in this industry?
Melcher: After I started working at Bergmann Associates, we began looking at 3D design packages. This is when I really “got it.” Once I could see more of what we were drafting instead of 2D lines and arcs, I really got into CAD. Helping the company transition from primarily designing in 2D with just a few design packages to using 3D in our design process and using multiple design packages tailored to specific disciplines has definitely been a highlight for me.
MST: What are some of the most challenging aspects of your job?
Melcher: Bergmann Associates is engaged in a number of both small and large projects. For instance, we’re one of four firms working on the Renaissance Square project here in Rochester, New York. For me, the most challenging part is maintaining all of the software packages that we use on our different projects. Keeping multiple design packages working efficiently in multiple disciplines across multiple offices can be very challenging, to say the least.
MST: As a CAD Manager, what kinds of problems do you encounter?
Melcher: Anything from “how do I get this icon on my screen” to “I just lost three hours worth of work”. It’s frustrating losing work or trying to get software to do something that it should do but doesn’t. Axiom’s tools help with that. Although I first heard about Axiom through mailings, it was at the BE Conference where I really saw what software options Axiom developed. [Editors note: The "BE Conference" is an annual conference sponsored by Bentley Systems.] Axiom tools have increased our productivity with software like Microsoft Office Importer. ™ We have been very impressed with what that tool can do.
MST: What do you use Microsoft Office Importer for?
Melcher: We have several people who use Microsoft Office Importer on every project they do. They use it with Microsoft Word for general notes and with Microsoft Excel for extensive tables like schedules or bill of materials. One of my colleagues recently told me the product was great, worked well and really saved hours of time on each of their projects.
MST: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
Melcher: As long as I’m involved with design technology in some fashion, and not just pushing paper, I’m sure I’ll be content.
MST: What book do you wish you’d written?
Melcher: The types of books I have read are not the types of books that I would want to write. For an example Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In order to write it, I’d have to experience it and that’s one I’d rather not.
MST: If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would it be?
Melcher: If it’s during the workweek, my Father — he’s retired!
MST: What do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Melcher: The big issue in CAD today is true interoperability. If we can accomplish that, we will see technology really take off in this industry. The buzz in the industry right now is BIM. [Editor’s note: Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the process of generating and managing building data such as geometry, spatial relationships, geographic information, quantities and properties of building components (like manufacturing information).] We all say we are “BIMing” or attempting to do BIM, but until true interoperability exists, I don’t believe you can accomplish it. The major CAD companies are acquiring a lot of software packages to cover each phase of a project to accomplish BIM. I think their intentions are to have software in each phase of BIM that’s interoperable. The problem is, we all use a different lineup of software to accomplish our goals on a project. Most likely, it will always be that way. This industry will accomplish more once there is a certain level of true interoperability between multiple software companies. I believe International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) has the most potential to make interoperability happen.
MST: Thanks, Melcher
Coming soon to a MicroStation seat near you: The Rise of Microsoft Office Importer!
Sunday, 7 September 2008Excel charts and MicroStation, linked at last!
Clearwater, Florida, USA — Summertime is always full of blockbuster movie releases. From May through August, Hollywood floods the world with the latest and greatest action-packed, explosion-filled, super-hero extravaganzas. The product development staff here at Axiom shares the same “summer blockbuster” mentality when it comes to product releases. Microsoft Office Importer is the latest release to grace Axiom’s red carpet.
Bring the popcorn, hot dogs and Excel charts, because in a summer full of blockbusters, this Microsoft Office Importer release promises to be the smash hit of the season!
The preview would go something like this:
“In a world of conventional ideas, one MicroStation add-on had the guts to stand up for what it believed in. ‘MicroStation and Excel can work together! Don’t call me crazy because I dare to be different!’
“All of the other MicroStation add-ons laughed and ridiculed him. ‘Your ideas have no place here!’ His peers shunned him, so he decided to fight back.
“This summer, see one MicroStation add-on rise up and beat the odds. See The Rise of Microsoft Office Importer, a Quentin Tarantino film starring Morgan Freeman as Microsoft Office Importer, Emma Thompson as MicroStation and Kathy Bates as Excel.”
Cutting-edge special effects and masterful acting aside, this latest Microsoft Office Importer release is sure to be a smash at the box office.
Microsoft Office Importer, one of Axiom’s most popular software programs, allows users to import equipment schedules, bills of materials, tabular data and construction notes into a design file with perfect formatting. The latest release of Microsoft Office Importer, for MicroStation V7 and V8, now allows users to import Excel charts into their design files. Once imported into MicroStation, Microsoft Office Importer actually recreates all charts using MicroStation elements. Microsoft Office Importer then establishes automatic links between the Excel chart and the chart in MicroStation so that any time the source chart in Excel is modified, the chart in MicroStation will be automatically updated every time the design file is opened. Importing charts in MicroStation without using Microsoft Office Importer only results in pasting raster images of the charts in MicroStation.
Due to high customer demand, Axiom designed Microsoft Office Importer to import any style of Excel chart into MicroStation design files quickly and easily. All a user has to do is copy the chart to the Windows clipboard, then use Microsoft Office Importer’s button to paste the chart into the design file. From then on, every time the design file is opened, Microsoft Office Importer’s automatic linking capability will ensure that the chart always matches the latest, up-to-date chart in Excel.
“Microsoft Office Importer’s ability to import charts is the first step toward its ability to import other objects from Excel into MicroStation like diagrams and drawings. This is an entirely new arena for Microsoft Office Importer, and I’m excited at the possibilities,” comments Mark Thomas, Executive Product Manager for Microsoft Office Importer.
Bring the popcorn, hot dogs and Excel charts because in a summer full of blockbusters, this Microsoft Office Importer release promises to be the smash hit of the season!
What's it worth to you? — Increasing quality of life for the overworked CAD manager
Thursday, 7 August 2008Clearwater, Florida, USA — Today’s CAD manager needs help. Whether communicating with decision-makers or supporting all his users, the CAD manager is spread too thin. I am willing to bet that the bulk of the CAD manager’s time is spent handling emergencies, instead of aligning the future of the team with the company’s expansion objectives. So why not get some outside help?
What would you do with an extra 400 hours?
What is Utility Software?
Utility software consists of programs that enable you to get your job done faster and more efficiently. Utility software handles redundant and time-consuming tasks by automating processes that take too long by the usual means. The programs in MicroStation Productivity Toolkit are utilities. Each solves a specific problem and increases the productivity of the user, by saving time while performing tedious, time-consuming tasks.
CAD managers Spread Too Thin
At Axiom, we understand that saving time is a principal objective. 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.
- 61% are in salaried positions (average salary: $53,847, or roughly $25 per hour).
- A CAD manager supports an average of 41 CAD users.
- 16% have purchasing authority.
Cost Justification and the Return on Investment
No matter how good the software is, you still have to explain its value — to yourself and to decision-makers — in a language that they understand: money. This is why the CAD manager has to be business savvy and understand how the money folk think. This is where cost justification and return on investment analysis come in handy.
Cost justification is the process of determining the return on an investment. The savings are measured and evaluated relative to the cost of the product.
We are on the same page if we agree that everything you spend your budget on should greatly contribute to your production. It is with this principle in mind that I present you three scenarios in which having a utility program greatly improved the productivity of the user and saved the company significant amounts of time and money.
Scenario 1
One of our customers reported the following costs associated with importing Excel spreadsheets into design files using MicroStation by itself: $40 (average designer and CAD drafter hourly rates added together) x 2.75 (average number of hours it takes to completely import a large spreadsheet using MicroStation alone) x 15 (number of monthly work days that at least one spreadsheet is imported) x 12 months = $19,800 per year spent importing spreadsheets.
Here is the cost of importing Excel spreadsheets into MicroStation files using Axiom’s Microsoft Office Importer: $25 (average CAD manager hourly rate) x 4 (average number of minutes it takes to import a large spreadsheet using Microsoft Office Importer) x 15 (number of monthly work days that at least one spreadsheet is imported) x 12 months = $300 per year spent importing spreadsheets using Microsoft Office Importer. Total yearly savings due to Microsoft Office Importer: $19,500. After subtracting software costs, maintenance fees and training time, the return on investment in the first year of the use of the software is a staggering 1,950%.
Scenario 2
One of our FileFixer customers commented, “FileFixer ends up saving us approximately 400 man-hours in a year. We couldn’t be nearly as productive without it.” If we apply the $25-per-hour rate to this scenario, we have a return on investment in the first year of 233% — the first year!
Scenario 3
Another scenario, “Whenever any MicroStation file came back from the client, our drafters would spend an average of about two hours finding and correcting the CAD standard violations. If one figures that we get about 20 files sent back to us by the client, that it took the 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, this totaled 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. In dollars, that is savings upwards of $3,000 in man-hours and a 33% return on investment after just the first project!
