How to load a custom UCF at startup of Microstation CE/OpenCities Map application.

Hello everyone, I have a question regarding loading custom UCF file during the startup of Microstation CE application(and also OpenCitiesMap/Advanced, OpenCities Map Ultimate).

Back in the days of V8I, there was an option to launch the Microstation with my own UCF file using the command line switch ws_USTN_USERCFG="myFile.cfg"... I made some investigation on this approach in this CE world and found out following :

  • _USTN_USERCFG is not usable anymore (because it was locked and I cannot change its value.. or is there a way?)
  • Custom configuration, preference files etc. are now stored in LOCKED position (i mean, I found out you can change the position of your prefs folder, however .ucf file is not affected by that)
  • Every program - Microstation, OpenCities Map, OpenCities Map Advanced, OpenCities Map Ultimate has its own prefs folder with files I mentioned before.

My question is, how did you guys solve the situation to launch a given application but with your own UCF file? I mean, I was thinking about copying my files into the prefs folder and name them Personal, but that means my configuration will replace everything and maybe sometimes I want to use it without it. Then another problem is that every product has its own folder path, so basically I have to copy my UCF into the correct folder depending on the installed version (and then I also though about what would happen if the directory path changes with some new updates[right now its in Microstation\10.0.0\prefs] - another trouble!).

Or is there a better and easier way to achieve loading selected UCF during the startup?

Thanks for any suggestions.

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  • Hello Jan, thanks for your reply.

    Yes, I checked many discussions, I found some new interesting informations that I didn´t know about before, but in conclusion, I found out that its not possible the same way as it was in V8I. At some point I was about to look for unlocking the _USTN_USERCFG value, but thats not the solution I want.

    A question is what do you want to achieve. If you want to apply the same set of settings, I do not see the ucf modification as mandatory. It can be also done by e.g. including always the same file to standard or another selected workspace level.

    I can explain. I want to achieve following :

    • I have an .ucf file where all my custom paths(for cells, dgn libs, dlls) and settings are saved.
    • Now I want to start a Microstation session using my launcher that will use these paths at the startup(like it does when it uses the right ucf file), but I dont want to affect the global prefs folder (thats why I dont want to copy my .ucf file into the global prefs folder).
    It can be also done by e.g. including always the same file to standard or another selected workspace level.

    Can you please describe this approach more ? 

    Thanks