Shape File Data in MicroStation

Hi David,

you asked in a wrong forum, because your question is about MicroStation, but you posted in Geospatial forum, which is about products like Bentley Map.

But anyway, the answers are:

Unknown said:

are there any tools in vanilla MicroStation to query or edit this data?

Yes, go to File > Item browser, all the tools are available in this dialog, including Search. You can also copy - paste the data into Excel.

Unknown said:

are there any tools in vanilla MicroStation to query or edit this data?

Yes, you can edit business data in Item details dialog. But I am not sure if it's not switched off by default.

Unknown said:

Any documentation on how the data is stored in MicroStation?

The overall concept is pretty complex, it's the result of very long developing technology called EC objects. The data are stored as XAttributes, but it's not very imporant, because you should never access to the data directly. In the current version of MicroStation, EC Framework SDK is available that allows manipulation with business data inside DGN file.

With regards,

  Jan

Hi David,

you asked in a wrong forum, because your question is about MicroStation, but you posted in Geospatial forum, which is about products like Bentley Map.

But anyway, the answers are:

Unknown said:

are there any tools in vanilla MicroStation to query or edit this data?

Yes, go to File > Item browser, all the tools are available in this dialog, including Search. You can also copy - paste the data into Excel.

Unknown said:

are there any tools in vanilla MicroStation to query or edit this data?

Yes, you can edit business data in Item details dialog. But I am not sure if it's not switched off by default.

Unknown said:

Any documentation on how the data is stored in MicroStation?

The overall concept is pretty complex, it's the result of very long developing technology called EC objects. The data are stored as XAttributes, but it's not very imporant, because you should never access to the data directly. In the current version of MicroStation, EC Framework SDK is available that allows manipulation with business data inside DGN file.

With regards,

  Jan

Jan,

Thanks for the detailed response.

Technically yes I'm in the wrong forum however I thought the people here would have a better working knowledge of the type of data I'm dealing with.

The Item browser seems to be the ticket.  Actually I'm not looking at editing the data attributes.  Rather query it and create selections where I can change level and symbology of the elements the data is attached to.

Will play with that and see what I can do.

Regards,

DavidG

Hi David,

Unknown said:

Technically yes I'm in the wrong forum however I thought the people here would have a better working knowledge of the type of data I'm dealing with.

Yes, the format is the same, but tools in MicroStation and Bentley Map are different.

Unknown said:

Rather query it and create selections where I can change level and symbology of the elements the data is attached to.

In such case MicroStation item tools would fit your needs perfectly, you can search for any businees data attached to MicroStation element and to add the results to MicroStation selection set, which allows to change the elements symbology. It's one from important difference between MicroStation and Bentley Map tools. In MicroStation you have to change the symbology manually, in Bentley Map it can be a part of import process. But because you can search you queries for later use, if your data are not too complex, it can be done in MicroStation in a reasonable time a repeatedly ;-)

Be aware DGN file is not database and the data are not indexed, so it can take time to search the data if they are huge.

If you will meet any issue in items searching, post a new thread into MicroStation forum.

With regards,

  Jan