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.
Jeff and Jerry, thanks for the tips. Some on-site training (held a few weeks ago) also helped. Fun bonus fact that we found: you can dynamically load the schema in Bentley Map via the CLI:
ggcaches reload all override
Yes, for now that may work. In the class I do not recommend using this as a regularly. There has been discussions of removing this since at times it is not reliable.
Good to know. Is there another (recommended) way for dynamically re-loading the schema? It's a huge pain to have to re-start Bentley Map each time we make a tweak to the schema. Thanks.
Yes, there is a method to the madness.
I would recommend.
Always remember, that yo do not need to "Export" all workspaces and metadata all the time. You can export the feature meta data separate from the workspaces, etc.
sorry meta instead of meat. Typo.