Composing Drawings Blog Series: Drawing Boundaries, Named Boundaries and Fields - Blog 1 of 3

Creating Drawing Boundaries in a Seed File

MicroStation CONNECT Edition offers the Drawing boundary and Named boundary features to simplify the cumbersome process of sheet creation and further enhance the dynamic views workflow. Using a Drawing boundary, you can quickly and easily define the location of a drawing. You can place multiple drawing boundaries on a sheet model. These drawing boundaries can then be populated with content. In this blog series, we will use Named boundaries to populate Drawing boundaries. Content within a Named boundary, updates automatically when any changes are made to the design. Thus, Drawing boundary and Named boundary together make drawing composition and sheet creation more intuitive and interactive. The below animation demonstrates the workflow:

Drawing boundaries can be defined in any active sheet model or in a seed file. However, creating Drawing boundaries in a seed file is considered best practice. 

In this blog, we will create drawing boundaries to place portion of a plan of a roadway with drainage structures, on one sheet and two details on another sheet. Later we will add content within these Drawing boundaries using Named boundaries. 

I have shared the MS BasicsCivil WorkSet which can be downloaded from here. We will use the Civil_DrawingSeed.dgnlib file in the DrawComp folder of the WorkSet’s Dgnlib, for creating drawing boundaries. I have used the same to demonstrate the following procedure:

1. Open the Civil_DrawingSeed.dgnlib seed file (....\MSBasicsCivil\ Standards\Dgnlib\ DrawComp) folder.
2. Activate the sheet model, PLAN. We will place a drawing boundary here. We will use this sheet model seed to create plan sheets in future.
3. Open the Place Drawing Boundary tool. (Drawing>Annotate>Detailing>Place Drawing Boundary).
4. In the Place Drawing Boundary tool settings window, make the following settings:
   
   You are prompted to define the first corner of the drawing boundary.
5. Issue the first data point in the upper left corner of the border and the second data point at the lower right corner of the border.
6. Place the annotation at the bottom center of the sheet.

The Drawing boundary is created. The annotation consists place holder fields for drawing number, sheet number, drawing name and scale.

Now we will create two drawing boundaries for the details in a separate sheet model.

1. In the Civil_Drawingseed.dgnlib seed file, activate the sheet model named DETAILS.
   The sheet is divided into two sections, one each for the location of a potential detail.
2. Open the Place Drawing Boundary tool setting. (Drawing>Annotate>Detailing>Place Drawing Boundary).
3. Make the following settings in the tool settings window:
   
   
4. Snap to the top left corner of the first section and enter a data point to define the first corner of the Drawing boundary.
5. Snap to the bottom left corner of the first section and enter another data point to define the second corner of the drawing boundary.
6. Next, enter a data point to place the annotation.
7. Likewise create drawing boundary for the second section of the sheet.
   Observe that the detail number is automatically incremented in the subsequent drawing boundary.
   In the next blog, we will populate these drawing boundaries with content using Named boundaries.