In MicroStation V8i you can use Drawing models or files to control reference level display on your sheet or layouts.
For example, let's say you have the same model attached to a few dozen sheets and now you need to turn off Level X on all sheets. What do you do? Go into all the sheets to turn off the same level over and over and over again? You can certainly do that, it's not as productive as it could be. Let's take a look at a simple workflow that simplifies this.
You can work along if you'd like, since the graphics below are using a delivered sample file.
Start MicroStation and set the workspace to Examples/Civil/Default
Navigate to the Designs folder and open BSI400-W01-Survey.dgn. This file contains a variety of graphics in a single design model called Survey.
From the Models dialog, create a new Drawing model.
From the Reference dialog, attach the Survey model. This Drawing model will now be attached to sheets and layouts.
From the Model dialog, create a new Sheet model and turn off the display of the sheet boundary. This is being done to keep the attention on the level display rather than scales and borders.
Now attach the drawing model created earlier as a reference. Ensure that the following are set:
Nested Attachments > Live Nesting
Depth > 1
Display Overrides > Never
The drawing model is attached and the level display is propagated to the sheet.
To see how the level display is controlled from the drawing model, navigate back to the drawing model and turn off any level.
Since the design, drawing and sheet models are contained in a single design file, the view flags are not automatically updated when flipping from model to model. To update the view flags, simply re-open the file. You can do that easy enough by pressing Alt+F then 1.
If the drawing and sheet models are separate files, then the level display change is evident when you open the sheet file.
The advantage of this workflow is that you can work in the original design model without affecting the level display of the sheet models.
This tutorial was inspired by the following forum post:
http://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_v8i/f/19565/p/57540/136043.aspx#136043