Original Post Date: December 2010
In MicroStation you can quickly and easily remove individual elements from displaying with this displayset trick. First ensure that the Displayset view attribute is enabled. You can toggle this manually in the View Attributes dialog, or use these keyins that you can easily map to your function keys:set displayset off, displayset on, and set displayset toggle.
The next step depends on the version of MicroStation you're using.
MicroStation XM: To remove the display of elements in the active file, or in an attached reference, select with the elements with the Element Selection tool, do a SHIFT+Right Click and choose Displayset > Remove. To redisplay the elements, choose Displayset > Clear from the right click menu. If using the right click menu isn't for you, then put the following keyins on a pair of function keys: displayset remove selection and displayset clear. What's neat about this method is that it does not require you to first put the elements in a displayset in order to turn them off. Not so with MicroStation V8i as described below.
MicroStation V8i: A change was made in MicroStation V8i that requires elements to be part of an active displayset in order to turn them off. To overcome this limitation, put the following keyin on a function key: displayset add;displayset remove. This will take the selected elements, put them into a displayset and then proceed to turn them off. To clear the displayset, use the right click menu or the keyin: displayset clear.
This tip is brought to you by the fine folks who contributed to the following discussion:
http://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_v8i/f/19565/p/20631/152421.aspx#152421