An empty Workspace?

Unknown said:

...which covers up to MS/J

In 2013 MicroStation V8i is twelve years further on from MicroStation/J.  Quite a few things have changed.

Unknown said:

... delete file \tom\ustn.r01 (what was it?)

That being one of the things that changed.  The xxx.r01 resource files were used with MicroStation/J to store custom user interface modifications.  With V8i they are obsolete, superseded by DGNLIBs.

The DGNLIB concept has surpassed its initial idea (a decade ago) as a level library.  It's come to be an almost-anything-that-isn't-an-actual-design library.  When opened with MicroStation as a DGN file, a DGNLIB may indeed appear to be empty.

Unknown said:

Please excuse naive Q in this elevated MS Admin forum

Well, it's the only Admin Forum we have (unless you succeed in persuading Phil C to start a Naïve Administrators  Forum), so all questions are welcome!

Unknown said:

The xxx.r01 resource files were used with MicroStation/J to store custom user interface modifications.  With V8i they are obsolete, superseded by DGNLIBs.

Unknown said:

The DGNLIB concept has surpassed its initial idea (a decade ago) as a level library.  It's come to be an almost-anything-that-isn't-an-actual-design library.

Unknown said:

When opened with MicroStation as a DGN file, a DGNLIB may indeed appear to be empty.

Unknown said:

unless you succeed in persuading Phil C to start a Naïve Administrators  Forum

Hi Tom,

For learning purposes without the complication of working with whatever existing project file structure you have, try the following:

Copy the whole folder:

C:\ProgramData\Bentley\AECOsimBuildingDesigner V8i Ss4\WorkSpace\Projects\BuildingExamples\BuildingTemplate_NM_Light

and rename to;

C:\ProgramData\Bentley\AECOsimBuildingDesigner V8i Ss4\WorkSpace\Projects\BuildingExamples\Tom_NM_Light_01

Then copy C:\ProgramData\Bentley\AECOsimBuildingDesigner V8i Ss4\WorkSpace\Projects\BuildingExamples\BuildingTemplate_NM_Light.pcf

renaming to:

C:\ProgramData\Bentley\AECOsimBuildingDesigner V8i Ss4\WorkSpace\Projects\BuildingExamples\Tom_NM_Light_01.pcf

Then edit Tom_NM_Light_01.pcf by adding  _USTN_PROJECTNAME = Tom_NM_Light_01

As shown here after line 13 (download Notepad++ to do this if you don’t already have it’s a brilliant text editor)

#======================================================================

# Project Description as it will appear in Workspace menu > About Workspace

_USTN_PROJECTDESCR                 = Building Designer Neutral Metric Light Dataset Project Template

_USTN_PROJECTNAME = Tom_NM_Light_01

#======================================================================

Open ABD and pick BuildingDesigner from the user pop-down (as I don't know what will have been included in the Tom user configuration file) then Tom_NM_Light_01 from the project pop-down.

In my opinion the user configuration should contain as little as possible, nearly all configuration being done at the site level plus project specific settings in the pcf.

I've just done this writing the steps as I went so it should just work.

There is more configuration to do to intergrate with a live project structure whether local or on your network or NAS. You don't really want live project data sitting in C:\ProgramData.

Repeat for Tom_NM_Light_02....

Thank you Marc - I do like a bit of firm direction - strictly for education purposes (no inhaling).

So this gives me a Workspace identical with User>Building Designer; Project>BuildingTemplate_NM_Light? But now free to modify/create my own Dataset? Brilliant.

Am amazed to see that e.g. BuildingDesigner.ucf is not a fixed thing, but modifies on-the-fly depending on which Project is selected.

Unknown said:

Open ABD and pick BuildingDesigner from the user pop-down (as I don't know what will have been included in the Tom user configuration file) then Tom_NM_Light_01 from the project pop-down.

In my opinion the user configuration should contain as little as possible.

Does this tom.ucf contain "as little as possible", to your liking? Was the Copy/Save worth doing, in interest of simplification etc, compared with User>BuildingDesigner? seems there's little enough in either ucf, and so little 'simplification' results? However it doesn't work because "Link set 'Building' not found".

I've seen systems where the entire configuration is in the UCF, it works for some situations.

The project name (_USTN_PROJECTNAME) will be updated every time you change project, that's all.

Each project contains (nearly) empty dataset folders so the dataset can be modified per project. You are still using the delivered core dataset in C:\ProgramData\Bentley\AECOsimBuildingDesigner V8i Ss4\WorkSpace\BuildingDatasets\Dataset_NM.

To make it your own you need to:

1. copy the whole Dataset_NM folder to Toms_NM (or similar)

2. do one more configuration change:

In Tom_NM_Light_01.pcf go to line 24 and change:

TF_DATASETNAME = Dataset_NM

to

TF_DATASETNAME = Toms_NM

Having done this open AECOsim then Dataset Explorer where you will see the paths to the parts go to your project or NM dataset

It is also possible to add in a company dataset, Bear's answers in this post are quite detailed on the topic, but that's not essential at this point. However putting any changes you make does have the long term advantage that the next bentley dataset update just slots in alongside Company and Project datasets rather than overwriting your changes.

Thanks a lot Marc - I already followed yr instructions to do most of that, will now do the Dataset Explorer thing

Thanks a lot Marc - I already followed yr instructions to do most of that, will now do the Dataset Explorer thing