XFM feature symbology to element templates

It's a good idea.  Unfortunately XFM is a Geospatial technology.  If it were part of the platform (i.e. MicroStation) then it could be used in other application areas.  A link to the XML schema might be stored in a DGNLIB.  It would make sense at that point to be integrated with element templates.  

That is the key problem Cad (MS) vs Geospatial technology (BM) in Bentley products, where in this case is the Bentley´s slogan word "Interoperability" excisting ????

Tom,

One suggestion is that you could simply use your Oracle enabled XFM project schema (w/o connecting to Oracle) in Bentley Map along with their placement methods etc... to place and edit XFM feature instances that would never be posted back to Oracle.

Thanks Jeff for this reply.

Allo All,

Let me thank you all for your feedback on this community. At Bentley we have the Product Management group which is responsible for gathering feedback from different sources (support, BE Communities, direct customer visits, sales report, market trend, etc) and then build the roadmap out of it. So we invite you to continue providing your feedback to us via the BE communities or support or directly to our product managers. Bentley has never been more market driven than today, but it seems that we have to find better ways to communicate with our users as you don’t seem to be sharing this point of view...

So let me start here by pointing you out to the “What’s Coming in Bentley Map V8i (Selectseries 3)” communities.bentley.com/.../184280.aspx . We have just posted it trying to be a little more transparent.

On the interoperability between Bentley Map and the other Bentley products (including Microstation) we are working on multiple things that would be available in Bentley Map V8i (SELECTseries 3).

• Enhancement to i-model publishing so that it supports RDBMS project in addition to currently available XFM based project.
• Export to DGN element inside the Map Manager supporting XFM, and Map Manager symbology which will convert all XFM features into plain MicroStation elements with the right symbology.

I love the idea of survey and we have done a few in the past on specific topics. I will have a look at your suggestion and certainly implement this for the Geospatial group, as we are trying to be as market driven as possible.

Thanks

Francois Valois MBA, Senior Product Manager, Geospatial Desktop

Thank you Francois.

There are a number of very positive points in your feedback and I'm sure we all look forward to to SELECTseries 3. :-)

If I could make one final suggestion.........

I'd try and 'under promise' and 'over deliver' as much as possible at this stage with the product. Many of the inclusions do sound good and if a relatively bug free version could be delivered 'sooner rather than later' I think it would be viewed very positively. Unfortunately with some companies 'Early 2012' inevitable means 'post June 2012' when what's really needed is 'Late 2011' or 'VERY early 2012'.

Thank you again for your feedback.

Jeff,

Thank you for the suggestion, I have tried our suggestion and therefore I ask for ideas to have the same standardized symbology in MS as in BM.

Why I try to get the symbology to standard MS is for speed and perfomance. In most project we are using laserscanned data (millions loaded) and also huge dtm:s (Terrasolid applications) in combination with vector graphics and  high resolution raster reference files , to be able to do everything ready (standardized) in one session without perfomance lost I want to use only MS.

I have notised that when BM is loaded the MS environment is much slower (and crashes) in large projects ( I don´t know why). Is this something that anyone else has noticed?

//Tom

AlanH,

Thanks for the support, I am glad to see that I am not alone in my criticism of Bentley Map.

//Tom

AlanH,

Thanks for the support, I am glad to see that I am not alone in my criticism of Bentley Map.

//Tom

Tom,

So may I ask, which portions of Bentley Map are you interested in using? It sounds like you are working with data that is not XFM feature based. If that is in fact the case, you may want to add MS_GEOXFM_NO_DYNAMICSCOREDFEATURES=1 to your workspace to disable DFS (Dynamic Feature Scoring) processing to improve performance. Please note that by disabling DFS, those MicroStation elements which are not native XFM feature instances will not be available for consumption by various functionalities, including the Map Manager, Interoperability and Data Browser applications.

We take the stability and performance of Bentley Map quite seriously so you can contribute to improvement in those areas. If you've a reproducible crash, please file a Service Ticket with our technical support so that the matter can be properly investigated.

Jeff,

I try to find one configuraton with MS/BM that includes whole workflow from surveying, dtm creation (ex. creation of elevation lines), 3d mapping, basemap information etc., so the last work to be done is just promoting the created elements for db (XFM/Oracle).

I don´t really want to have two configurations where I have to choose what kind of work I need to do in what configuration (MS or BM), my goals and hopes are that Bentley come up with a powerful BM that can handle all kinds of civil engineering project and at the same time is able to give the user the opportunity to use the power of Interoperability.

Thank you for the suggestion, but that is an on/off function (MS_GEOXFM_NO_DYNAMICSCOREDFEATURES=1), I rather need load/unload BM functionality (or all BM) that slows down MS in ongoing session without exit MS, is that possible?

I am glad to read that you take the stability and performance of Bentley Map seriously, I have reported this issue to technical support, but again, until now it have taken too long time for all ST:s,TR:s and CR:s to be released, (my opinion is that BM needs to be uppgraded at least 4 times/year), so meanwhile between the annual releases of BM the only way is to get the work done is to find a workaround and wait.

//Tom

Tom,

Correct, the MS_GEOXFM_NO_DYNAMICSCOREDFEATURES=1 configuration setting is either on or off (not set) and can only be changed after stopping/starting a session. If you are using "promote" you are creating native XFM feature instances so disabling DFS should have no direct impact on your workflows other than potentially improving performance.

Could you please contact me directly with information on your specific service tickets so that I can follow up to better understand your particular issues? If you have not done so already, I would hope that you would be able to provide us with sample XFM schema and large data set that replicates the described performance and stability issue(s).