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 to workflow integrity:
But in other scenarios it can be desirable to disable the integration to make it easier to work with data that lies outside a ProjectWise environment, whether on the local PC or network.
Integration is effected by a system level configuration file in each application, for example:
"C:\Program Files\Bentley\MicroStation CONNECT Edition\MicroStation\config\appl\pw.cfg"
The application's pw.cfg includes the ProjectWise Explorer configuration file:
"C:\Program Files\Bentley\ProjectWise\bin\mcm.cfg"
Which in turn includes:
"C:\Program Files\Bentley\ProjectWise\bin\mcm.user.cfg"
This latter file contains the configuration that defines the integration.
As is generally the case with system CFG files, these files must not, and need not be edited to modify this behaviour.
Despite the advice above, pw.cfg contains the line:
# Uncomment to disable ProjectWise integration when this product is launched from the desktop.# PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION_FROM_DESKTOP=1
As I work largely on local files, I used to do this...every time I installed a new version, which as well as contradicting my own advice, was very tedious.
So I first of all, because PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION_FROM_DESKTOP only exists within pw.cfg, I put the whole code section from pw.cfg into WorkSpaceSetup.cfg in my Custom Configuration:
However, that was a quick and dirty approach; unpicking this block reveals the obvious fact that the active variable is PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION (the surrounding logic is there simply to enable a now out of date recommendation to edit a system CFG file).
Thus from the central IF statement:
%if !defined (_PWEXPLORER)PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION = 1%endif
it is fairly clear that the statement PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION = 1 works on it's own .
Adding PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION = 1 to your configuration at the appropriate level of your Custom Configuration will disable ProjectWise Integration for all applications that use it.
Generally the best place for this is in ...\MyCustomConfiguration\WorkSpaceSetup.cfg.
To apply the variable to all installed MicroStation based applications, you can set PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION as a Windows User Environment Variable. How you get to the System Properties dialog varies according to which build of Windows you are running as Microsoft gradually move away from the older Control Panels dialogs. I find the quickest way is use the key-in Windows Key + Pause to get to the correct page in the Settings dialog, then click 'Advanced System Settings':
Click New under User variables, then enter the variable name PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION and value 1. The result is shown below in the Edit dialog (which is identical to the New dialog):
Opening files from within ProjectWise Explorer will open the associated application set in ProjectWise with whatever configuration is applied by the ProjectWise configuration.
If a Managed Configuration has been implemented it will still be applied regardless of the state of PW_DISABLE_INTEGRATION.
Always consult the administrators of any ProjectWise datasource to ensure you are using the correct version of any applications that you intend to use with the datasource!