Clearwater, Florida, USA — It is 3:00 PM on Thursday. This means that Monday’s drawing submission deadline is rapidly approaching. Dreams of that Saturday afternoon barbecue are rapidly fading. Now, your entire Saturday afternoon is shaping up to be a trip to the office. Even worse, those fresh steaks you picked out last night for this weekend’s barbecue are looking more and more like they’re going into the freezer for the following weekend.

The project is almost done and the finishing touches are all that is left. Unfortunately, one of those finishing touches is ensuring that all the project data in title blocks is correct. It is your responsibility to ensure that all of the title block data is up-to-date and to manually update all 500 files in your project. This is painstaking and could take days.

Enter Title Block Manager
Title Block Manager, Axiom’s premier title block management software, can intelligently read a batch of design files and distinguish between elements that are in title blocks and elements that are not in title blocks. Once Title Block Manager finds these title-block-specific elements, it can then update and modify title blocks in hundreds of design files at the same time. This dramatically cuts down the time it takes to perform mundane tasks like modifying sheet numbers or adding revision data into a title block.

This article is going to show you how to tell Title Block Manager how to intelligently find title block elements in your design files using the newly added Rule Wizard.

What’s a rule?
Rules are the foundation for Title Block Manager’s ability to understand your existing title blocks. Rules make up the roadmap that Title Block Administrator (the administrative component of Title Block Manager) follows to find your title block elements.

Title Block Administrator’s Rule Wizard helps users create rules in an easy, step-by-step manner.

We’re off to see the wizard.
The latest versions of Title Block Administrator now utilize a Rule Wizard that helps users create rules using an easy, step-by-step process. After choosing “Wizard Mode” from the “Choose Editing Mode” dialog box, click the <Add> button to create your first rule.

After clicking the <Add> button, the Rule Wizard asks the user to define a label. A label is the unchanging text within a title block that identifies the type of information that goes in a specific area. Examples of labels are “Designer:”, “Drafter:” and “Title:”.

Title Block Administrator first locates a label element, then looks for a corresponding value element in a location relative to the location where it found that label element.

Once you have selected your label, it’s time to use the Rule Wizard to tell Title Block Manager how to find the value that goes with each label. Select the value just as you did with the label. Values usually correspond to a label.

An example of a value would be the phone number in the picture below.

This screenshot shows a label-value pair. “Phone:” is the label. “(727)555-8855″ is the value. Once you’ve told Rule Wizard about the relationship between the label and value, Title Block Administrator can now find all the phone numbers in all the title blocks in all your design files totally automatically!

After identifying the value, click the <Next> button.

Once you have defined a value, the Rule Wizard will ask you to define a field name. Field names are unique names used for the “magic link” Title Block Manager attaches to the value. Typically, field names match the label. However, for certain cases the field name may be defined as “Revision 1″, “Revision 2″ and so on, in order to accommodate labels with multiple values. After defining your field name, you’re almost done!

Checking your label and value properties allows you to put the “finishing touches” on your rules before moving on to the next step.

All that’s left is to check the properties of your labels and values. This is your chance to check your work. Title Block Administrator uses this data to find labels and values in multiple design files. If a label or value resides on another level in other design files, click the magnifying glass button to select the other levels it could reside on. If a property you want to modify does not have a magnifying glass button, you can type new values directly into the proper field.

Once you have checked your label and value attributes click the <Finish> button.
Success! You have just created your first rule using Title Block Administrator’s Rule Wizard. Now, all that’s left is to repeat the steps with the remaining labels and values in your title block. After you have created rules for each label and value pair, run Title Block Administrator’s “Upgrade existing text to TBMgr text” action on your active file.

Grillin’ and Chillin’
Now, once you have updated all of the title block data in your title blocks, your weekend will be filled with steak rather than overtime.

By Chris Borales, Product Manager
CLEARWATER, FLORIDA, USA — As a software designer I am often confronted with questions. Questions that range from “How does this work?” to “Why is that there?” and especially “Can it do this?” It’s my job to find answers to each of them. In particular, a question posed to me by Title Block Manager users was, “How can I use Title Block Manager to process files that each contain more than one title block?”

Before, the answer was tough for me to deliver and even tougher for some users to swallow — “Sorry, the feature hasn’t been developed yet.” Now the answer is simple — “Use the latest release of Title Block Manager!”

Title Block Manager allows users to automatically extract title block data from a group of design files into an editable database. Once the data is extracted, users make changes to the data in the database and automatically update all of the appropriate title blocks. This is all done at the click of a button.

Above is a design with multiple detail sheets prepared for plotting. This is a prime example of a desing file with multiple title blocks. The new Title Block Manager comes in handy in these cases.

Title Block Manager consists of two separate applications: Title Block Administrator and Title Block Client. Title Block Administrator is used for performing administrative tasks such as exporting and updating title block data, as well as, creating new title blocks. Title Block Client is used for placing and modifying title blocks.

Now, Axiom’s premier title block management software allows users to manage multiple title blocks in each design file! A feature implemented due to heavy customer demand, this will be especially useful for GEOPAK users that automatically generate their title block sheets. A typical cross-section sheet may have 20 title blocks in a single design file!

The “Increment cell names during placement.” option allows users to place cells with incrementing cell names such as TitleBlock1, TitleBlock2, TitleBlock3…

Uniform title blocks are attained through Title Block Manager’s two-part program: Title Block Administrator manages the data contained in title blocks.

Title Block Client is used for placing and modifying title blocks.

Each sheet in the design has a separate title block that has information that must be managed. Without Title Block Manager these changes would all have to be made manually. With Title Block Manager these changes can be made at the click of a button.

How it works
The key to Title Block Manager’s new functionality is Title Block Client. This tool now has a new feature to “Increment cell names during placement”.

This feature will automatically increment the names of title block cells placed in each design file — automatically differentiating the cells from one another. For example, each cell placed could have the name “TitleBlock1″, “TitleBlock2″, “TitleBlock3″ and so on. Since each cell has a different name, Title Block Administrator can differentiate between the title blocks, extract the data from each title block separately and place it into the database. Once in the database, the data can be modified and used to automatically update the title blocks in the design.

By placing cells with different cell names, Title Block Client gives the user the ability to place and bulk edit multiple cells in design files. Title Block Manager users are no longer confined to having only one cell per design file.

Call me if you need me!
So, use Title Block Manager version 4.1a or 8.5b to have the ability to manage multiple title block cells in a single design file. Also, if you need to call me for any reason, please feel free. Note: Version 8.5b is for MicroStation V8. Version 4.1a is for all MicroStation versions prior to V8.

2005: a Title Block Manager odyssey

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA, USA — While Title Block Manager, as a program, is far from becoming the software that powers an artificial intelligence system responsible for controlling a spacecraft, the creators of the HAL 9000 (the astronaut-killing, omniscient supercomputer of the book and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey) would be proud of the leaps and bounds made by the Title Block Manager development staff in 2005. 2005 marked a step toward managing existing title block information through artificial intelligence. They year also saw the successful integration of Microsoft Access as an output database for title block data and a dramatic increase of processing speed.

Title Block Manager was conceived on the notion that CAD shops need and want the capability to modify their title block information in batch. Originally, the program was only able to modify a proprietary title block cell that was placed inside a design file. While these title block cells were very helpful with new projects, they were difficult to implement throughout an existing project (one that had been started prior to a CAD shop’s installation of Title Block Manager). Since CAD shops often have thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – of active and archived design files containing title blocks that were placed without the benefit of Title Block Manager technology, we wanted to find a way to address this.

In late 2004, the Title Block Manager development team was presented with this problem: “How can Title Block Manager modify existing information contained in a title block?” The solution: create a method by which Title Block Manager can intelligently read existing drawings! This solution, while elementary, is much more complicated in practice than in theory. How is the program to differentiate between information contained in the drawing from that information contained in the title block?

Different kinds of title blocks
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, while having the least possible user interaction and manual input. Axiom CEO, David Greenbaum, came up with the solution: Design an intelligent algorithm that utilizes inputs from the user and element-pattern-seeking software to play a sophisticated game of “hide and seek”, resulting in the 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 files in question. In an intricate version of “Where’s Waldo?”, the program uses these rules to spot all the instances of each type of title block. [Editor's Note: "Where's Waldo?" is a series of kids books where the object is to find tiny man named "Waldo" and other tiny characters in large pictures of scenes containing hundreds of people.]

To state it more technically, Title Block Manager creates rule files (sets of operating commands) from the data input by the user to identify which elements are title block elements. A rule is the roadmap 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 linkages to them. With this linkage in place, users can take advantage of Title Block Manager’s batch processing capabilities and automate many time-consuming data management tasks.

Faster speed equals increased productivity
Aside from the capability to read existing title blocks, Title Block Manager versions 3.0a (V7) and 8.3a (V8) boast dramatically faster processing times than the previous versions. Title Block Manager’s functions have been dramatically sped up across the board to offer increased productivity to all Title Block Manager users. Changes to title blocks can now be made in seconds as opposed to minutes!

Microsoft Access
Along with the increased speed of Title Block Manager, the program can now create Microsoft Access tables. Prior to the release of versions 3.0a and 8.3a, Title Block Manager created only Excel spreadsheets containing the title block information. Now, the program has been expanded to create Access tables. This feature gives users the option to either create true databases of their title block data or Excel spreadsheets of that data.

Edit fields
Title Block Manager also has the ability to instantly modify field values of individual title block fields (including tags) by holding down the <Shift> key while clicking the right mouse button. This feature enables users to quickly and easily modify Title Block Manager title block field values.

Free upgrades to existing customers
Title Block Manager maintenance holders, throughout 2005, have had the luxury of numerous updates to the program. Microsoft Access compatibility, dramatic speed increases and the capability to extract data from existing title blocks are all major enhancements. All users with active maintenance receive these updates, at no additional cost, as they are released.

The development staff has been on a rampage this year, providing users all that they need and want from Title Block Manager. Next year promises to be just as fruitful for the development team, which, in turn, will provide users with much more value.