Merging single text elements

Question

Hi all, 
 I have well over a hundred single text elements following a railway depicting chainage every 5m. The text follows the route of the railway. At the moment all the text is the same i.e. 0m, so what I am looking for is away of changing all the text automatically..so it reads 0m, 5m, 10m etc. I have started the process manually but it's going to take me a long time, and errors could occur. I have tried grouping the text, but you can only edit each text element individually. I would like to have all the text as one element, and to beable to copy the text into excel, with a couple of mouse clicks create all the chainage and then copy & paste back into Microstation while maintaining the location & alignment of the original text. Any ideas? 
 
 Thanks 
 
 Matt

Jon Summers · Accepted Answer

Unknown said: Any ideas? 
 How about a tool ... 
 
 That let's you pick each text element, then adds 5m to a running total and updates the text? 
 That places chainage text at 5m intervals along a line that you choose? 
 
 Unknown said: I would like to be able to copy the text into Excel, create all the chainage and then copy & paste back into MicroStation 
 While I understand that would be an attractive approach, there is a potential problem. If the text elements are not in the correct linear sequence, the values will be updated in the wrong order. 
 Suppose the text elements were digitised like this: 
 T1 -- T2 -- T3 -- T5 -- T6 -- T4 -- T7 -- T8 
 Then the annotation would end up like this: 
 0m -- 5m -- 10m -- 20m -- 25m -- 15m -- 30m -- 35m

Phil Chouinard · Answer

Although not fully automated (mainly due to the "order" in which the text might have been actually placed), you could use the Copy and Increment tool for something that goes fairly quickly. With AccuSnap enabled, change the level attribute of the same text string to something that is unique (will come back to this later). Then set the level you want the incremented text to be on, start the Copy and Increment Text tool, set the increment to 5, select the first text string you want to start with the base as (let AccuSnap snap to the "lower left" keypoint of that text string), then move the cursor to the lower left of each subsequent text string. When you get to the edge of your view, select Pan View, pan your view to put more text strings to select in screen, reset, then continue. Rinse, repeat. Next, turn off all levels except the one you "moved" all the same text strings to in the first step here. Then delete that. 
 
Perfect? No. But pretty fast production.

Lorys · Answer

Found exactly what you wanted By Karsten is increment_text.mvba 
 It will use the 0m text you already have and add +5 infront of the m in 0m 
 the link to see the video and how it will work with the arcs and straights is http://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/f/273/p/70583/211786#211786 
 
 and the link to down load the vba which is just further down by Karsten is http://communities.bentley.com/cfs-file/__key/telligent-evolution-components-attachments/00-273-01-00-00-20-22-14/increment_5F00_text.mvba

Lorys · Answer

Karsten has given permission to up load the new improved version .. I'll try and upload this week end...

Merging single text elements

Chainage