MicroStation Basics for Civil Designers - Chapter 6: Manipulating and Modifying Elements for Civil Designers

Existing elements often need to be manipulated and modified. You may need to move or copy them, or you may need to extend or trim.

The MicroStation CONNECT Edition provides many tools to help you manipulate and modify existing elements. You can group multiple elements for manipulation and modification.

This video is an overview of the video series. You will discover how to manipulate and modify existing elements by using the tools in the Manipulate toolbox and the Modify toolbox.

https://youtu.be/1TDF9Yt8oa0

In this video series, you will utilize a variety of manipulating and modifying tools to construct the site plan’s features, such as the proposed curbing and line striping that will make up the parking.

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Part 1: Move and Rotate In this video you will begin by bringing in the proposed building foot print. With a setting toggled in the References dialog, you can use the standard Manipulate Element tools to operate on a reference as if it were a element such as a line or a shape. In this case, you will move and rotate the building onto the building pad.

https://youtu.be/bhU5Ddm4jd4

https://youtu.be/9oZaP67RyOw

Part 2: Copy Parallel In this video you will begin the layout of your proposed site plan by utilizing the Copy Parallel tool to construct curb lines and parking stalls. You can use this tool when you want to move or copy an element, or portion of an element, parallel to the original.

Part 3: Copy In this video you will continue using the Copy Parallel tool to layout the parking lot features but will also start utilizing the Copy Element tool as well. Here you will use along with it, AccuDraw for precision placement.

https://youtu.be/faEf4--uih0

https://youtu.be/HagvOgCtGUI

Part 4: Fillet and Trim In the this video, you start to use some of the Modification tools such as the Construct Circular Fillet tool to further layout out the proposed site plan. You will also use trimming tools such as Trim to Intersection and Trim Multiple to clean up extra line work.

Part 5: Mirror The Mirror tool can be used to mirror elements about a horizontal line, a vertical line, or a user-defined line, or about the element center. In this video, you will utilize the Mirror tool to create a mirrored copy of the geometry that you’ve created thus far to quickly generate the other half of the site.

https://youtu.be/us8MesGjQG8

https://youtu.be/x2qmZis7-68

Part 6: Shorten Elements with Trim to Element The Trim to Element tool lets you extend or shorten an open element, or multiple open elements simultaneously, to their intersection with one other element.

Part 7: Break Element Break Element is used to remove unwanted portions of elements. In this section, continue to create the proposed curbing near the entrances. Then you will utilize the Break Element tool to break up the continuous line work of the curbing at the proposed site and subdivision’s entrances in order to then create the curb returns.

https://youtu.be/JOlCc_MtPyU

https://youtu.be/140a2dTkEfU

Part 8: Construct Chamfer To construct a chamfer between two lines or adjacent segments of a line string or shape, you can use the Construct Chamfer tool. In this video you will use the Construct Chamfer to clean up the property line at the entrance of the subdivision.

Parent topic: Civil Designers