Microstation How To

By Author: Rick Sewell
Total Articles: 3764
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Clearwater, Florida, USA - At various times, during almost every project, it is necessary to prepare project design files for submittal to the organization or executive who authorized or is paying for the work to be done. Part of this preparation includes updating each design file's view attributes and other design settings to make sure they meet the project's requirements.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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For more information on Global File Changer, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 1229, e-mail 1229@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com now!