Sharing ORD configurations with MSCE

There have been other questions here about having MSCE open ORD configurations, which is not really a problem by itself, but now the plot thickens....

This is a bit long, but stay with me, some of you may be facing the same issue.

Within the past week I have been contacted by two clients about setting up the MicroStation configurations so that they can utilize WorkSpaces from different versions of ORD, and also accessing non-ORD based configurations.

The situation is as follows...

  • DOT A projects are done in ORD 10.10 (located in P:\CAD\ORD\ORD 10.10\Configuration)
  • DOT B projects are done in ORD 10.9  (located in P:\CAD\ORD\ORD 10.09\Configuration)
  • Client C has a different set of standards that are purely MicroStation (located in P:\CAD\MicroStation\Configuration)

How do you configure MicroStation to access three different sets of standards stored under three different Configurations?

The solution I have come up with so far is:

  • Configure MicroStation so that _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION is set to Client C's MicroStation configuration
  • Add a WorkSpace cfg file to MicroStation custom configuration with the same name as the DOT A ORD 10.10 Workspace cfg
  • Add a WorkSpace cfg file to MicroStation custom configuration with the same name as the DOT B ORD 10.9 Workspace cfg
  • In those two DOT WorkSpace cfg files change the value of _USTN_WORKSPACEROOT to the corresponding ORD configuration location
  • %include the corresponding DOT ORD WorkSpace .cfg file.

This seems to work well, however...

DOT A also has older projects in ORD 10.9 that are not being moved to ORD 10.10. How can I tell MicroStation to access the ORD 10.9 WorkSpace instead of ORD 10.10?
I can't change the WorkSpace name because the dgn's are branded to the other WorkSpace name, changing the branding would introduce all sorts of other problems.

I also haven't tested this with any ORD configurations that implement Roles. That might be another sticking point.

Anybody else having the same problem?