Projects/worksets - what is the benefit to us?

I know that I am probably opening myself up to a load of grief but anyway!!  

As part of the CE Bentley have been pushing us the users towards the use of ‘worksets’ and seemingly removing access to parts of the program if we don’t use them. E.g sheet indiexing.

Our company has never used worksets (projects) in all the 25+ years that we have been using MicroStation. The main reason for this is that there doesn’t appear to be any benefit for us to go down this route. This is mainly due to the setup we have. We have, on our server, a copy of the system/standards install folders which include one customised DGNLIB, one customised .upf, one customised seed file and a number of pltcfg files which have been set up to work directly with various printers on the network. We also have a set of company drawing title sheets. At the time of install MicroStation is then pointed to this server folder. There are separate folders for CE and v8i.

These files give us everything (tools, levels, etc) that we need to be able to produce models and drawings for whatever client that we work with. We don’t need or use customised drawing title sheets, unless a particular client wants his logo adding. The logo is added to one sheet and then model copied in one 'drawing sheets' file.

The other item that we have on the server is a standard 'Project folder structure' which includes separate folders for drawings, documents, correspondence, etc. This is the first thing that is copied and renamed for every new job that we have. This means that we have no need to create any additional folders as part of worksets. In fact we are not allowed to create any new folders.  

Based on the above, the question to all you workset users is what is the benefit to us? At this time I can’t see one but am open to suggestions! 

Parents
  • Simplified answer, the workspace/workset format is there just to help us organize our various projects. It will be different for each individual site. It sounds like what you have as standards could be a Workspace, Worksets can be clients or you can just have one if you like. Set it up to suite, simpler is usually best.

    I was not using that hierarchy previously (v8i), with Connect, my biggest issue was ustation stopping to ask if files were part of a particular Workset. I used a batch file to set them all to an appropriate Workset. Only downside was the file dates were updated (and I believe the archive bit was set).

    Connect r17 10.17.2.61 self-employed-Unpaid Beta tester for Bentley

  • So... each project needs to be its own workset? And each existing project needs to be made into a workset? And you can't just pop back and forth between files without having to change the workset every time?

    We have hundreds of projects, with 95% of them being for the same client. It's not unusual to be working along on something, only to have an engineer come up and ask me to get into another project for a minute, look at something and print out a few sheets. Do worksets mean that I will have to exit MicroStation every time I need to look at (print) something in a different project? Do we really need to have hundreds of worksets? That sounds like a lot of overhead to manage.

    MaryB

    Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918
    Power InRoads 08.11.09.918
    OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2

        

  • Hi Mary,

    So... each project needs to be its own workset?

    No, there is no such mandatory requirement, it's only common idea, but you can have one workspace / workset combination for everything (in my opinion less buggy than to use No workspace / no workset combination) or you can use any other approach that can be transformed into Workspace / workset combination.

    Do we really need to have hundreds of worksets?

    How do you use MicroStation workspaces now?

    Regards,

      Jan

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