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Posts Tagged ‘Title Block Manager’
MicroStation Today — June 2009(Volume 16, Issue 6)
Monday, 1 June 2009Easily modify all your MicroStation tags with just a few mouse-clicks.
Saturday, 7 February 2009By Rick Sewell
It seemed a typical day as I manned Axiom’s Technical Support phone lines. Calls were coming in with the usual questions. Yes, Global File Changer will replace cells in all of your files in one shot. Yes, FileFixer will repair your file. Then I received a call from a fellow with a question that was quite out of the ordinary.
Changing tags in hundreds or thousands of design files can be done quickly and easily if you have the right tool.
He was looking for something that would allow him to extract tag values from his design files to an external database and also allow him to manage the tag values from there. He needed to do this not on just a single project either but “thousands of DGN files,” he said. “A real, hairy-monster of a job.”
My first thought was that we could likely custom program something to do the job. I didn’t know of any Axiom tools out of the box that would do it. Needing more information in order to give the problem a proper assessment, I had the customer send me some sample files to analyze.
As I opened each sample DGN file, I noticed that all the files were nearly identical. Each file contained a series of cells with five tags associated with each cell. They looked like a bunch of baby title blocks. Title blocks? That’s it! Title Block Manager has the ability to extract tags directly from MicroStation and copy them into Microsoft Excel! [Editor's note: "Tags" are database-like elements that may be attached to graphical elements in design files in order to provide more information about the graphical element (or elements) tagged. Tags can be displayed graphically.]
Just as the name indicates, Title Block Manager was designed to handle title blocks. The initial Title Block Manager release didn’t handle tags. However, it was later discovered that a number of customers used tags in their standard title blocks. To accommodate those users, we enhanced Title Block Manager to extract selected tag values (instead of extracting only regular Title Block Manager text elements from title blocks). This is when the universe opened up.
The new tag handling feature in Title Block Manager isn’t limited to just handling tags in title blocks. It allows you to extract tag values from any tag set in any set of design files! It’s like we have another application entirely living inside of Title Block Manager. We should call it “Tag Manager”. [Editor's note: A "tag set" is a set of associated tags. Each and every tag is part of a tag set.]
Check it out. Figure 1 shows some tag values within a DGN file. In this file, the tag values represent unit numbers in an apartment building.
Figure 1. In this sample design file, the number on each apartment door is a value of a tag. With the right tool, you can extract all your tag values from all your DGN files and have them automatically entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Once there, you can quickly modify as many tag values as you like and put them back into your design file.
This design file contains six occurrences of a tag set (the same tag set is attached to each apartment door). This particular tag set contains three tags. One of these tag names is “Unit Number”. Each tag in a tag set can be given a different value. In this case, the tag values of each of the six “Unit Number” tags are “101″, “102″ “103″, “201″, “202″ and “203″.
Title Block Manager will take each of these values and place them elegantly into a spreadsheet (or a database) by creating a row in the database for each occurrence of each tag set that was placed in the DGN file. Figure 2 shows the actual tag data extracted from the sample design file. Each row in Figure 2 is a record of an instance of a tag set attached to an element. Column B, with the header “TBlockID”, contains the name of the tag set (in this simple example, we are using only one tag set, named “Apartment”). The next column shows the element ID number of the element that was tagged. The heading of each of the next three columns (in Figure 2) contains the name of each tag in the tag set. Notice that the tag set “Apartment” contains three tag names — “Unit Number”, “Size” and “Resident”. Each tag name becomes a column heading in the Excel spreadsheet. Within each field under each tag name, you see the value of that tag for the given element. For example, for element number 461 (the lower left apartment door), the tag value for tag name “Unit Number” is “101″. For that same element, the tag value for tag name “Size” is “2-Bedroom”, and so on.
Figure 2. Title Block Manager automatically, elegantly places all of the essential tag data into an Excel spreadsheet.
You can process all your design files and have a complete library of all the tags used in your files. Being able to do that is pretty impressive. But that’s just the half of it. You can also modify your tag values in the spreadsheet and write the modifications back to your design files!
In Figure 3, I’ve changed all the tag values listed in the spreadsheet under the “Unit Number” column heading from “101″, “102″, “103″, “201″, “202″ and “203″ to “1A”, “1B”, “1C”, “2A”, “2B” and “2C, respectively.
Figure 3. Title Block Manager lets you quickly change tag values in Excel and then easily write them back to your design files (compare the above to the values for “Unit Number” in Figure 2)
With nothing more than a few mouse-clicks, Title Block Manager will write the newly changed values back to the design file. Here is the result (Figure 4):
Figure 4. Tag values are updated in all your design files in about one second per design file modified.
Remember, you can process all your design files here. So go get your tag-laden design files and start having some fun with them.
MicroStation Today — February 2009(Volume 16, Issue 2)
Sunday, 1 February 2009
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How to save time and increase profits
Wednesday, 7 January 2009Taking the CAD manager’s power to a whole new level
Clearwater, Florida, USA — “Companies like ours are under enormous pressure and are trying to ‘fast-track’ projects by leveraging and re-using existing design data.
Axiom’s enterprise-level programs such as Global Workspace Manager boost production and save time.
“I was asked to ‘convert’ approximately 200 drawings for re-use in a new project. The project manager unsuccessfully tried to find and replace the new project numbers manually in a trial-run. He was skeptical when I told him I could make all of the changes in one afternoon.
“It took me less than 3 hours to process all 200 drawings. To do this manually would probably have taken us weeks! Instead of being slightly behind schedule, the project is now a few weeks ahead of schedule!
“Axiom products have saved us hundreds of hours in time!”
— C.A., CAD Manager
Since Axiom’s 2008 introduction of MicroStation Acceleration Garage (a cost-efficient package of nearly all of Axiom’s time-saving software products and e-learning courses plus an entirely new line of enterprise-level, productivity-boosting applications), CAD managers have discovered that combining time-saving MicroStation add-ons with effective training leads to huge savings and more company profits.
MicroStation Acceleration Garage includes e-learning!
Axiom’s self-paced MicroStation, GEOPAK and InRoads training courses are also included in MicroStation Acceleration Garage. Users can now learn from MicroStation, GEOPAK and InRoads gurus without wasting valuable production time traveling around the country or sitting in a course room. In fact, any user can learn new skills or brush up on existing knowledge without leaving his or her desk!
“We had an employee who hadn’t touched CAD in 7 years — and she had only used AutoCAD. We got your MicroStation V8 Essentials CD and she started training with it. Within two weeks she was doing billable work. It was very impressive. We are very happy with the training.” — D. L., CAD Manager
V7 and V8 Toolkit applications in a single package for the first time
Axiom’s V7 and V8 Toolkits have never been offered together before — this is a first for the MicroStation Acceleration Garage. MicroStation Acceleration Garage also includes Axiom applications which have never been part of Toolkit before: Title Block Manager, English-to-Metric and RasterDgn are included!
Global Workspace Manager, an enterprise-level application, allows CAD managers to modify any machine’s settings, copy settings from one workstation to another and move standard files and projects between workstations or servers without leaving their desk.
Manage every MicroStation workspace without leaving your desk
MicroStation Acceleration Garage also includes new enterprise-level MicroStation applications, taking the CAD manager’s power to an entirely new level.
Tired of trying to figure out which workstations are running which version of MicroStation? Losing time due to having to personally walk (or drive) to inspect the workspaces of each of your designers? Too much re-work having to be done due to wrong workspace settings on some machines? The first of the new enterprise-level applications can actually manage dozens, hundreds or thousands of MicroStation workspaces, all from one computer. It’s called Global Workspace Manager and is included in Garage.
Global Workspace Manager allows CAD managers to analyze, manage, modify and control every workspace they have. With Global Workspace Manager, CAD managers no longer have to guess who is working on which project, hope that they’re using the correct resources and pray that something doesn’t go wrong with a MicroStation installation or workspace that one of their users is working with. Now, without leaving their desks, CAD managers can monitor who is working on each specific project, verify that the correct project or company standard CAD resources are being used for each project and make changes to the workspaces including all of the configuration files. It also allows CAD managers to copy an entire project along with all its resources (seed files, DGN Libs, fonts, line styles, color tables, etc.) to another network server or to an individual computer. Global Workspace Manager shows which MicroStation versions are installed on each workstation, shows when projects were last worked on, shows who has worked on each project (this helps planning for allocating manpower) and compares several machines to easily pinpoint errors on a specific workstation. Global Workspace Manager lets a CAD manager view and control any MicroStation environment variable in any MicroStation workspace on any computer in his company that MicroStation is installed on without leaving his desk.
If Google and MicroStation had a baby, what would you get?
Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone about this one just yet. It’s still a secret. Here’s an inside scoop on another of those new enterprise-level applications that is about to hit the MicroStation universe (and AutoCAD too, for that matter). How would you like to have instant access to just about anything you can imagine regarding your design files? How would you like this access not just in your local CAD shop, but anywhere in your company? How would you like to find, for example, all instances of “Main Street” in all project files — instantly? And once you found them all, how would you like MicroStation to zoom in on any instance of one and show it to you — instantly? How about getting an instant count of every instance of cell “Transformer 211″ in every design file at your site?
How about being able to instantly find every instance of a cell named “Oil Well” close to a piece text containing “Dallas” everywhere in your whole corporation? Proximity searching is just one of the many features of this new product.
What should we call it? Global EdG one customer suggested, but we’re still debating. We welcome your suggestions.
Coming to a MicroStation Acceleration Garage near you in 2009.
Want to save time and look like a genius at the same time?
If you’re a CAD manager or MicroStation user who is interested in saving time and increasing productivity in the coming year, you should attend a free, on-line demonstration of the suite of products included with MicroStation Acceleration Garage.
The curse of the mummy’s deadline
Tuesday, 7 October 2008An interview with Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II
Cairo, Egypt — In search of an appropriate interview for the October edition of MicroStation Today, I found myself in Cairo, wandering the streets and looking for a story. A few of the locals informed me that the Egyptian Museum had a healthy collection of mummified ancient Egyptian kings, so I thought — being the Halloween issue — it couldn’t hurt to take a look.
In ancient times, missing a deadline could mean your death.
After wandering through halls laden with artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, I located Ramses II, arms crossed and with a gold mask covering his face. I kept walking and a few displays down, there was another mummy in an open casket, a roll of papyrus and ancient Egyptian pen laid at his feet.
Intrigued, I picked up the papyrus and was startled to discover… it held blueprints for a pyramid! If I could interview this chap, the article would fit right into the October edition! I picked up the pen and thought for a bit. My eyes darted to the inscribed plate in front of the casket: “Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II”. Suddenly, the mummy started to move!
MicroStation Today: My god!
Romulus III: Aaaaauuuuuuuurrrrrgggghhhhh! Who disturbs my slumber?!
MST: Um… Er, hello. That would be me. I’m a reporter for the monthly periodical called MicroStation Today. It’s a CAD-related magazine… MicroStation specifically. I was wondering, could I do an interview on you? I’m sure our readers would love to hear about your experiences as an architect in ancient Egypt!
Romulus III: Hmmmm… As you have taken my drafting pen, you have incurred the wrath of the dreaded Romulus III — Chief Architect for Ramses II. This, I cannot forgive.
MST: What if I were to replace the pen immediately after we do our interview? No harm, no foul right?
Romulus III: Well, I suppose that would be alright. It is a tad drab just sleeping all the time. What have you got?
MST: Well, you must have a pretty interesting story on how you began as an architect. Can you tell us about that?
Rumulus III: I started off as a mason [someone who builds with cement and materials like stone and brick] when I was 15, carving stones and such. There was a complete lack of wood, so most of our buildings were built of stone, which was just as well, I heard that a lot of them are still standing today. You can’t say that about most structures that old. Anyhow, I wasn’t that fond of manual labor, so I apprenticed under a master architect, and he taught me a lot. By the time I turned 24, I was Ramses’ Chief Architect. I had a lot of respect, but also a lot of responsibilities. Structure design is no walk-in-the-park, let me tell you. I would have given anything for some way to speed it up and handle the problems that kept popping up.
MST: You know they have something like that now, it’s called “MicroStation”. It’s a Computer-Aided-Design software program. It lets you design entire structures with pinpoint accuracy and much faster than traditional pen and papyrus.
Romulus III: That’s amazing! And there are no problems with it?
MST: Sometimes there are, but there are tools like FileFixer and Title Block Manager that help sort those out quickly and painlessly.
Romulus III: Wow! Sounds like those would have been life-savers!
MST: Yeah, I know.
Romulus III: I don’t think you do! I was executed for not finishing the designs for Ramses’ “Thebes Temple Remodeling Project” in time! That man was an insane multi-tasker! He wanted all existing monuments to reflect his divine nature and power, so we had to come up with plans to redesign dozens of existing temples in his image, and he wanted it done in a month!
MST: You could have done it in a week with MicroStation and Toolkit.
Romulus III: Exactly! Now you know what I mean when I say “life-savers”. Anyhow, at least I was given the gift of eternal life by mummification. He must have liked me to some degree.
MST: Yeah… Next question: What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?
Romulus III: The Ramesseum, hands down. [Editor's note: The Ramesseum is a memorial temple that was built by Pharaoh Ramses II in 13th century B.C. It currently lies in ruins across the Nile river from the city of Luxor.] There were three statues of the man [Ramses II], one of them weighed over 1,000 tonnes! It was preceded by two courts and had giant pillars, huge walls, the works! I am definitely proud of that one. I heard it’s not doing so well today though. Pity.
MST: What is your favorite movie?
Romulus III: Well, you’d think that I don’t watch TV, stuck here in my display. However, the museum guard booth is just down the hall a bit, as you can see, and last year one of the guys (“Bakari”, I think his name is) brought his daughter to work. She sat in there and watched a cartoon called “The Prince of Egypt”. Excellent film, very true-to-life stuff. I pulled my wrapping down a bit from over my eyes and watched the whole thing. I laughed so hard, I started coughing up dust!
MST: Yeah, I saw it too, good stuff. Now, what do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Romulus III: I had always thought it would be wonderful if they made a special table with instruments attached that helped you measure distances and draw perfect lines and curves on your papyrus.
MST: Yeah, that’s already been done. It’s called a “drafting table”.
Romulus III: Ah, I see. Well… then how about some sort of magic box that can hold thousands and thousands of designs. Maybe even simulate the designing process — allowing you to draw faster and more accurately!
MST: Yeah, we’ve got that too. It’s called a “computer”. And the “Computer-Aided-Design software” I told you about earlier is what simulates the designing process.
Romulus III: So that’s what a computer is? Fantastic! I heard you say “computer” earlier, but I just ignored it. Didn’t want to tie you up for too long here. Anyhow… So you’ve already got that, huh? Okay, well I’m sure there are things that could be improved, like, say a guy needs to make bulk changes to all of his designs? Changing all circles to squares or making all of a certain type of line thicker, that would be a “next-big-thing” wouldn’t it?
MST: We’ve got that too, it’s called Global File Changer and it’s part of Axiom’s Toolkit.
Romulus III: What about when something goes wrong and you can’t open your designs?
MST: FileFixer handles that. It’s also in Toolkit.
Romulus III: Well you know what? You just may have asked the wrong mummy!
MST: That very well may be the case, Romulus. I’ve got to catch a flight in about half-an-hour. Are you ready for me to replace the pen?
Romulus III: (Yawn) Yes, I think so. I’m growing rather sleepy. This is the most excitement I’ve had in the last 700 years!
Romulus crossed his arms and laid back in his display case. I placed the pen and the papyrus back at his feet and made my way outside to flag down a cab. “The Editor is not going to believe this,” I thought, clutching my notebook to my chest. I hopped in the cab and said, “To Cairo International Airport! And step on it!”
Why settle for a toolkit when you could have the whole Garage?
Sunday, 7 September 2008Finish 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:
- Global Workspace Manager — Manage all your MicroStation workspaces without leaving your desk. (Slated for release in Fall 2008.)
- CadExplore Browser— Find and zoom in on any MicroStation element or model in your whole corporation instantly. (Slated for release in December 2008.)
The father of American architecture – An interview with President Thomas Jefferson.
Monday, 7 July 2008Monticello, Virginia, USA — In addition to being the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson was also an accomplished architect. He designed Monticello (his home in Virginia), the Virginia State Capitol Building and University of Virginia’s entire original campus. In celebration of the birthday of the United States of America, MicroStation Today arranged to speak to him about his love of architecture.
MicroStation Today: Tell us about yourself.
Mr. Jefferson: Well, I’ve been called “Man of the People”. I spent the better part of my life establishing the rights of the states. Aside from practicing law and politics, I also dabbled in many fields over the years such as fishing, archeology, writing, architecture and gardening. I actually came up with a way to enjoy English peas, fresh from the garden, three full months out of the year by staggering the planting of fifteen different types. English peas are wonderful!
MST: I bet they are! Now Mr. Jefferson, I suppose most of our readers know what you have done as a statesman, but can you tell us some things about yourself that our readers might not know?
Mr. Jefferson: Hmmm… Well, not many people know that I was the first president to shake hands when greeting people instead of bowing. I always liked to keep my posture in tip-top shape. It’s amusing to look around now and see how much the handshake has caught on!
Aside from that, I used to keep a pet mockingbird named Dick in the White House study. I would let him ride on my shoulder whenever possible. I even trained him to take bits of food that I held between my lips at meals! Dick would always hop along after me, never far from my side.
MST: That’s amazing! Now earlier you mentioned that you “dabbled” in architecture. I Googled your name and I would hardly call that dabbling, can you tell us about some of your history with CAD?
Mr. Jefferson: Oh, CAD? When I started out, CAD hadn’t even been thought of yet. The majority of my work was on pen and paper, I had to use Axiom’s conversion services to convert it all to DGNs. I dare say, working with design files is exponentially easier then working with the old pen and paper. I was so relieved when the conversion was done!
Anyhow, after the conversion was complete, I used my design of Monticello to put a little 3D application on the web so that people can do a virtual tour.
MicroStation was a big step up from the old days of pen and paper. I must admit that when I first started using MicroStation, I did run into some problems. One day I was walking through my bear garden — I kept quite a few bears in my garden, they were gifts from Lewis and Clark you see — anyhow, I was walking through the garden and I received a call from an associate of mine at the American Institute of Architects. He was frantic, babbling about how he was sorry and he meant no harm. When I finally calmed him down, he explained that he had been working on the Monticello design and when he hit “fit view”, the whole design file had become a dot! I immediately called Axiom, they sent me FileFixer and the file was back to normal in a matter of minutes. I don’t know how we got this far without any of their tools! I immediately purchased MicroStation Productivity Toolkits for all five of my designers and it has paid for itself several times over.
MST: What is your title? What are your daily duties?
Mr. Jefferson: I guess I would describe myself as the author of the Declaration of American Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom. Oh yes, also the Father of the University of Virginia. Those are the things I am most proud of.
As for daily routines, I really do so many things. I spend some time on archeology, digging up old ruins and such.
There is one thing that I have done for many years though. Quite some time ago, I was given a large piece of cheese, a 1,235 pound hunk of it to be exact. I’ve been chipping away at it for years now with crackers and apples and such. Have you ever heard the term “The Big Cheese”? That term actually originated from this fantastic gift — interesting bit of trivia.
MST: What are some of your biggest CAD jobs? Please provide details on them.
Mr. Jefferson: I’d have to say that designing my home in Virginia, the Monticello, was quite a job. But the Virginia State Capitol and the University of Virginia campus were both pretty large as well.
We were actually right in the middle of a huge job — hundreds of design files — when the United States switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. This meant that we had to change the date by eleven days in each and every title block! That would have been days and days of man-hours! Luckily, I had Title Block Manager! I was able to make the change in every single design file in just a couple of minutes! I really dodged a bullet there! [Editor's note: The Gregorian calendar handles leap years differently than the Julian calendar and more accurately reflects the time it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun.]
MST: What is your favorite TV show?
Mr. Jefferson: West Wing.
MST: If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or deceased, who would it be? What would you talk about?
Mr. Jefferson: Ah, that’s easy! That would be English philosopher, John Locke. I always wished that I had had the chance to speak with him. I was inspired by his thoughts on property and value. For instance, the idea that ownership of property is created by the application of labor, and nothing else. If you were to read the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, there is no doubt that you would see shades of Locke shining through.
As for what we would talk about? Anything and everything! I’ve studied his work and philosophies. But I know nothing of the man! For instance, who was his favorite football team? Did he prefer a particular genre of music? These are the things I would ask.
And, of course, I never tired of debating political theory with my good friend John Adams.
MST: Any final words for our readers?
Mr. Jefferson: Never give up on freedom. I went through a lot to help get us where we are today and I’d say I’ve given everyone a pretty good head start. But keep in mind, I’m not merely talking about politics, I’m talking about every aspect of your life. Since this is a CAD periodical, I’ll just say that if there is a barrier in your way that is preventing you from doing your job right or if it’s stealing your weekends from you, get the tools you need to get it done right and right now. That’s what I did and it worked out pretty well for me!
MST: To all American MicroStation users, have a wonderful Independence Day.
Tips & Tricks — The Project Manager’s nightmare! How do you quickly renumber 237 sheets?
Monday, 7 April 2008Clearwater, Florida, USA — 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.
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 chance for error. Lets 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.
A quicker way
There is another option. Using Title Block Manager, export all title block information to a database (Excel or Access). Then make changes in Excel and export all the corrected title block data back to your design files. It takes five or ten minutes and is less error-prone than having a team of ten CAD operators editing the text. Instead of a blood-curdling scream, the sites that have Title Block Manager would have a different scenario. You would hear “OK, time to use the Axiom tools.”
The steps are simple:
- Open MicroStation and start Title Block Manager.
- With Title Block Manager loaded, select Microsoft Excel (or Access) to edit the title block database.
- Click on <Edit Database>. It takes a couple minutes to use the automatic increment and the copy feature to renumber all the sheets and change the total sheets field in the database. Save and close the database.
- Click on <Select Files> to select all 237 sheet files.
- Click on the <Update selected files from the database> action.
- Click on <Start>, check your e-mail, get some coffee and four minutes later the job is complete. Times may vary slightly.
Edit your title block data in bulk with Excel and Title Block Manager.
Renumber all 237 title blocks at one time.
Now which scenario sounds best to you? Updates that take you four hours or just over six minutes — you decide.
Insisting on the best — How CAD Manager Donnell Griffith handles the constant pressure to get the job done faster and easier
Thursday, 7 February 2008New York City, New York, USA — CAD Manager Donnell Griffith was so impressed with Axiom products at his previous job, that when he came to work for Urbitran, he requested Title Block Manager, RefManager and Microsoft Office Importer straight away.
Donnell Griffith jumped at the opportunity to learn.
MicroStation Today: Hi Donnell, what are some of the problems you encounter in your position?
Donnell: Some of my problems? Well, I guess the same as any other CAD manager: drafting production, quality assurance – and anything else they decide to throw at me. The biggest problem I face is the constant pressure to get the job done faster and easier. Axiom’s products help me do that. The Axiom tools I currently have are Title Block Manager, RefManager and Microsoft Office Importer. Axiom products help me by saving time through automating time-consuming tasks.
I had this one situation on my last job, when I was at Jacobs, Edwards and Kelcey. We had a job that was over 1,000 drawings. The job was broken up so that we were working on it in three of our offices: Miami, Chicago and my office in New Jersey. We had three sub-consultants working on it as well. When the time came to combine all the work, there were many little changes that had to be made to make it all consistent. Then we would get new drawings, from Chicago or Miami, which meant all of the existing sheets had to be renumbered. Title Block Manager made it very easy to do the renumbering in batch. About 900 had to be renumbered in all. We basically had one title block we used on all the drawings but each office, with the help of Title Block Manager, would change it slightly to reflect that it was drawn in that office, you know: “drawn by,” “checked by,” and so on.
When the drawings were finally combined, with all the references attached, we used RefManager to handle the levels that needed to be turned off. Using RefManager allowed us to do this on many files at the same time.
We used Microsoft Office Importer to import large quantities of data from Excel. Since Microsoft Office Importer establishes a link between the spreadsheets and the design files, it was easy to update the many little changes we had to make to that data. That is why I requested getting those Axiom products at my new job. I have a job I am working on now that will require me to renumber about 500 title blocks. Title Block Manager will come in handy.
Another big way Axiom helped me was through their training. The trainers at Axiom showed me the best ways to use the products. It made life much easier.
MST: Donnell, you have a pretty interesting story on how you began in the CAD field. Can you tell us about that?
Donnell: I was introduced to CAD through a minority training program called JUMP in 1994. I couldn’t afford to continue in school and needed a job. I went to the business library in Manhattan and found a book on scholarships and internships. I made a few calls and got in the program. I have been in love with CAD ever since. [Editor’s note: The Joint Urban Manpower Program helps New York engineering firms meet equal opportunity and affirmative action requirements by recruiting and training females, minorities and disadvantaged individuals for entry-level drafting and construction inspection positions on New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Engineering Agreements.
MST: What would you like to be doing in ten years?
Donnell: I would still like to be working within the CAD industry, something other than engineering and architecture. I would like to be doing something more creative and pushing the limit of what CAD can do.
MST: What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?
Donnell: I don’t think I have accomplished it yet. I am still young and I feel very good about the future. I see myself growing in the CAD field. I want to see how the CAD field grows too.
MST: What’s a book you wish you’d written?
Donnell: CAD: Making the Most of Computer Aided Design.
MST: If you could trade places with anyone for just one day, who would it be?
Donnell: New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg – he doesn’t need money.
MST: What do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Donnell: I think the next big thing will be with hardware. The way we communicate with CAD drawings currently involves a lot of input. You don’t have as much freedom as you do when drawing with a pencil.
MST: Thanks, Donnell.
Title Block Manager: The Legend
Friday, 7 December 2007By Rick Sewell
Clearwater, Florida, USA — Title Block Manager was conceived on the notion that CAD shops need and want the capability to modify their title block information in batch.
At first, it seemed kind of easy: “We’ll start by making this cool application that allows you to create a specialized title block and assign database connectivity to it. Then all you have to do is press and away it goes, updating that database from the title blocks or visa versa, updating the title block from the database. Unfortunately, it proved to be not quite so simple. Even though Title Block Manager does have that capability, that capability alone was not enough to solve the problems faced by MicroStation users in the real world. You see, that method is great when you’re starting a new project. But what do you do with the thousands of project files that already have title blocks?
Problem no more
Title Block Manager’s development team was presented with this problem: “How can Title Block Manager modify information contained in existing title blocks?” We needed to create a method by which Title Block Manager could intelligently read existing drawings. While conceptually simple, it is much more complicated in practice than in theory. The problem becomes: How can the program differentiate between the information contained in the drawing itself, and the information contained in the title block?
Since title blocks vary so much from design firm to design firm, the designers of Title Block Manager had to come up with a solution that was flexible enough to process each type of title block, without requiring ongoing user interaction and manual input. The solution was to design an intelligent algorithm that utilizes rules described by the user, along with software that can recognize element patterns to play a sophisticated game of “hide and seek”. The result is automated identification of all title blocks, wherever they may be lurking. All the user has to do is provide a few “clues” (rules) by inputting some characteristics of the elements that compose each of the various types of title blocks in the set of design files. The program uses these rules to spot all the instances of each type of title block.
To state it more simply, Title Block Manager creates rules files (sets of operating commands), from the data input by the user, to identify which elements are title block elements. Rules files are the roadmaps that Title Block Manager follows in order to read existing design files and differentiate between elements that are in the title block and elements that are not. Once the title block elements are identified, Title Block Manager locates all the values within the title block and attaches Title Block Manager-specific links to them. With these links in place, users can take advantage of Title Block Manager’s batch processing capabilities and automate many time-consuming data-management tasks.
More on the database side
Title Block Manager takes data extracted from the title block, arranges it in a standard table format by rows and columns, where each data field in the title block becomes a column and each title block (from individual DGN files or models) becomes a row.
Using Title Block Manager, all the title block information from hundreds or even thousands of design files can be extracted and stored in a single spreadsheet.
These tables of data can be stored as Excel spreadsheets or Microsoft Access database tables. The CAD manager has easy access to the title block data in all of his design files within a single table or spreadsheet.
Though Title Block Manager is already a legend, the design team still works tirelessly to improve performance, both in the back-end functions and by streamlining the user interface. With its constant forward progress, we don’t see an end to this legend any time soon.
