Looking under the bonnet...

Like most Ribbon UI applications the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) can be customized, before stating to explore this consider where any customizations will be stored. The default is in personal.dgnlib and will only be available to the person who adds the…

I've never liked the idea of duplicate data sources and the inevitability of them becoming out of sync, never mind the tedium of double entry. Excel functions can be used to link between worksheets to allow one list of values to used in different places…

Pick Lists are useful when working with Items Types, they save repetitive input and aid data consistency. When creating pick lists of any length or when you have existing lists in some text format, it is far quicker to use Excel to create sources from…

We frequently suggest that people watch the command prompts in the status bar when learning new MicroStation based applications or techniques: You can see these prompts at your cursor during any graphic operation by adding the following configuration…

Updated version of this article, which was originally posted on 18 Aug 2017 In CONNECT Edition - Custom Configuration - Part 1 : Initial Creation Steps I described how the installer can be used to specify the location of your Custom Configuration by setting…

This is an updated version of an earlier V8i 101 article. A DGNLIB is a DGN file used for the storage and distribution of shared resources. Its internal structure is identical, only the file extension is different. Files with the .dgnlib extension are treated…

For convenience here are links to search results for several of the themes on this blog: OpenBuildings Designer Setting Up in the Real World Using it! CONNECT Edition - Custom Configuration CONNECT Edition - Configuration Tips Site Standards Supporting…

Many users have over the years set the variable MS_DEFCTBL = Company_ColourTable.tbl and then wondered why any other colour table ever shows up. The assumption being that once you set a variable for a default colour table that is what you will get. However…

Drawing Scale is a tool box I have permanently docked. In any MicroStation based application press Ctrl + T to open the Toolboxes dialog. To open Drawing Scale scroll down and tick the box, click OK: I turn off Sub Unit and ACS Scale as I rarely use…

Bentley's CONNECTION Client will, unless told not to by installation options or user preferences, offer to update enabled CONNECT Edition applications. Like most other software update features, the update offered will always be the latest release. This…

Once the ProjectWise Explorer client application is installed on a PC, integration between it and most other Bentley applications will be enabled by default. Obviously in many situations ProjectWise is used all of the time and integration is essential…

Originally published 4 Feb 2015 We have had a few questions about rounding dimensions to the nearest 5mm. This is not currently available via the Dimension Styles dialog but there are now methods available for both CONNECT Edition and V8i. CONNECT Edition…

Here are a few points on using the CONNECTION Client. As this utility is updated more frequently than our primary desktop products always go to the CONNECTION Client wiki for the latest and more extensive information. Right-click on the Tray Icon in your…

While much of the discussion about GenerativeComponents (GC) has focused on model generation, GC has always been capable of working with elements from other DGN files. In current versions the most appropriate way to make existing DGN data available to…

From Update 4 of CONNECT Edition we added new functionality to the existing Catalog URL Property. Previously this was only capable of presenting the text of a hyperlink. We now offer live links, subsequently enhanced in OpenBuildings Designer to export…

Background For decades canny administrators have been locating MicroStation's user preferences on a server share for ease of management and, most importantly, to enable user profiles to roam with each user in situations where IT does not roam user profiles…

Previous articles have described how to use ConfigurationSetup.cfg to redirect your applications to a networked configuration. Another common question asks how to use our applications when out of the office or working at home (obviously pertinent to the…

We have been asked how setting out coordinates for building components can be provided using real world coordinates, when we recommend modelling close to the Design File Origin. Recent enhancements to our Reports feature combined with knowledge from our…

Series Index - Setting Up in the Real World In the case of linear infrastructure it is fairly obvious that each major facility along a route will have its own GCS. Other cases may be less clear cut. Take an airport. This diagrammatic example (the runways…

As items drift down a blog's timeline they can be overlooked, so here is an index for this series of pieces:

Series Index - Setting Up in the Real World ’ve been picking away at the whole issue of where to model in 3D space for a long time. One of the sources of confusion is the use of ambiguous names or descriptions for some of the key concepts. The following…

Series Index - Setting Up in the Real World Following the techniques used in Setting Up in the Real World – GeoReferencing Update, a similar approach uses individual facility/building footprints as the guiding geometry. This allows the individual…

This is a handy tip for configuration management in Windows 10. If you select dissimilar items in Windows File Explorer, in this example, a WorkSpace folder and it's CFG file, copying them obviously results in <file/foldername> - Copy.xxx, etc. However…

Lookup tables are a good way to avoid manual data entry and ensure consistency. Item Types now have a lookup tables capability. Combined with storage of Item Types in shared DGNLIBs and the Pick List feature this is very powerful. The outcome of the steps…

For some reason Microsoft decided that hiding file extensions in Windows was a good idea. This is fine if you are just wanting to distinguish between,say, Word or Excel documents. However once you get beyond the obvious icons, as we often do in AEC, not…