I was reading this post at https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/f/z_-archived-microstation-v8i-forum/69397/microstation-v8i-design-file-advanced-setting-resolution and was wondering how someone would have determined that changing the Design Resolution setting “changes the size of existing geometry in the model”, as stated in this post? The only thing that I have noticed from tests I’ve done on this is that these settings affect the ability to zoom in as close as one might want to in their model. I have done some minor testing on this and below is what I have found . . .
Our company has their seed files (2 – one for State Planes East and one for State Planes West) for surveys in the state of Alabama with the following Design Resolution settings . . .
However, with the settings shown above, my ability to zoom in as much as I would like on certain elements are hindered. From what I have tested, simply changing the Advanced Settings > Resolution: to the settings in the next screenshot does nothing to the size of the geometry, but does allow me to zoom in closer to objects than the previous settings do . . .
Since I am relatively new to MicroStation (maybe 3 years total in the last 10 years, but a 25+yr. AutoCAD user) I am not sure exactly why this is so, but I have two test drawings created from the same seed file with the only changes being made to the settings being those shown in this last screenshot. Distances I’ve measured in both of these test drawings seem to be exact, and Google KML files created from both seem to appear in the exact same location on Google Earth. How could this be so if changing these settings would result in changes in the size of the geometry as the post about has stated?
Rayford,
Think of MicroStation's design plane as a huge piece of graph paper. What you are doing in the "Advanced Settings" part of the dialog is telling MicroStation the spacing between tic marks in the graph paper. With the settings in your first screen shot, when you draw a 1 Survey Foot line, it takes up 12 tic marks. Now suppose you set the Resolution instead to 12000 per foot - then when you draw a 1 foot line, it takes up 12000 tic marks. MicroStation's windowing tools set a minimum number of tic marks that you can see at a time, that is why you can zoom in closer in the second case than the first.
Accuracy, however, is not changed, because the actual coordinates are stored in double precision floating point. So if you wanted to draw a line that is 13 inches, in the first case it takes up 13.5000 tic marks, where in the second case it takes up 13500.0 tic marks. The accuracy is the same.
Because of the limitation on zooming in, however, I suggest you use 1200 or 12000 rather than 12.
To do the test you are describing correctly, set up the Resolution as 12 and raw a one foot line. It will measure as 12 inches or one foot. Now change the Resolution to 12000, and that same line will now measure as .001 foot.
Barry
Hi Barry,
I have always left the Advanced Settings at their defaults of 10000 per Meter. I change the Master Units to US Survey Feet and US Survey Inches, so my measurements readout in my preferred system. The difference is handled internally by MicroStation and I don't need to worry about making the units match.
Is there any worthwhile benefit to changing the Resolution units from Meter to US Survey Foot so that they match the selected Master Units?
Thanks,Ron
Not really. If you were looking at the actual stored coordinates of your graphic elements in MicroStation they might make slightly more sense to you, but you never need to do that. Letting MicroStation do the math works just fine.