Old Microstation 95 developer here . Our office is in the midst of upgrading from 95 to Map Enterprise/ Descartes. We're still very confused about Geospatial Admin / Schema. I'm less concerned with creating a schema and more concerned with how to use it. If were going to be attaching shapefiles as reference files when exactly does the schema work it's magic? When we attach the reference shapefiles there's nothing that says "Apply schema".
You use the GSA to define the XFM schema to match that of the shape file (feature geometry type and properties). You then start Bentley Map with the XFM Workspace generated in the GSA. When you import the shapefile, you will now have a option to map the shape file feature set with one of the features defined in the XFM schema. You will also be able to map the feature set properties with the XFM schema feature set properties. Once you are happy with this ( test it first), then save the import definition out to a impx file so you can reuse it with a shapefile of the same feature set/properties.
HTH
Jerry
Jim's colleague here, also a new Bentley Map user. Some more questions on that front..
1) To work with the XFM Workspace, do you need to launch it from GSA each time, or is there a way to do this from Bentley Map directly?
2) At what point in the import process do you get this option to map a shapefile (etc.) to one of the features defined in the XFM schema? I tried this out - Bentley Map imports the shapefile, but there are no user prompts, nor does it look like the schema worked its magic (shapefile features should have been mapped to cells, etc.) Not sure how this is supposed to happen.
Answer : No. From the GSA, you generate a XFM Project Workspace, and from the Bentley Map file manager you tell Bentley Map to use the user workspace just generated from the GSA. You can even place a shortcut to this on your desktop or in a program group.
Answer : You map the features after you have loaded the shapefile in the interoperability form. Select the shapefile feature set, and then select the mapped name option in the general settings.
Once this feature is mapped, then you can map the attributes.
You can now save this as a .impx file, for the next time you want to use the same shapefile for imports.