v81 series 2

Question

I have a client who's dgn file has stop displaying the drawing elements this morning. They state the drawing was fine the first time it was open and later when opening it, the drawing no longer displayed anything. I am getting the same results when I open the file. When viewing the levels display the drawings levels still show as being active and used in the drawing. I have looked at the level manager and the display column for the levels used are checked. I have tried edit>select all and nothing highlights in the drawing. Any ideas as what is wrong and how to correct is greatly appreciated.

George A. Martin · Answer

In addition to Mike's comments and without seeing a sample (can you post a sample file?), The elements may be Construction, Pattern, Text, Tags, Dimensions, Data Fields that can be turned off in the View Attributes. You may have Transparency issues (level/element/reference), A Displayset set, Someone may have placed a Black shape over the elements or turned the elements to the BG Color. If you turn off the Displayset View Attributes for the view and do a Select All does it display a number of selected elements in the Statusbar? There may be a small element at a great distance from the rest so if you do a Fit All it will zoom way out so it looks like dots on the screen. The Levels can be turned off. So many things could display a blank screen.

George A. Martin · Answer

I noted that there were some elements with transparency turned up to 80-90% There were also elements with Priorities and BG (Background) Colors. I was able to bring back some of the elements using the FixRange mdl after using the utility Mike used to Fix/Repair the file. Can't say the file is any good now but at least you can see (Some of) the elements. There is a lot of data behind the graphics but you need software not available in basic MicroStation to access it. It takes some time after Selecting or opening before it is done. 
 You should contact someone at Bentley about the file. They may be able to help you!

Ron Jones · Answer

Hi Ronnie, 
 I took a look at your file. It seems like almost everything inadvertently got scaled up a huge amount. If you select everything ( Edit>Select All ) and check the element information ( Element>Information ), then pick a cell from the list and you'll see the scale is astronomical. The only exceptions are the *_Title_Block and ANSI_D cells, which are scale:100. In fact if you turn off all levels except ed_cabinet and then fit the view you will see the plansheet. Now you can turn on all levels and a few more elements will appear. To get back all of the other elements try scaling them by the reciprocal of the current scale of a cell that was originally placed at a scale of 1. 
 Here's what I did: 
 
 Display only level ed_cabinet and fit the view. 
 Turn on all levels 
 Select everything: Edit>Select All 
 Deselect only the elements that are visible in the view 
 Scale the selected elements by .00000000000231749 (This is the reciprocal of 4.31501e+11, which is the current scale of most of the cells in the file, so I assumed they may have been originally been placed at a scale of 1.) 
 All of the elements in the file should now be visible and hopefully the correct size. :-) 
 
 The elements may not be the correct size since I made an assumption about what value to scale by. Since you are familiar with the files, you should be able to make a more educated guess as to which current cell scale value to use the reciprocal of, for the scaling factor. 
 HTH, 
 Ron