Microstation V8i SS10

The release of that version changes the meaning of this page by 6 months and a year for the support of v8iSS4. 

https://www.bentley.com/en/desktop-applications

Strangely I have just had an email from Bentley confirming this release!! 

That's not incorrect.

So the select server will be shut down at some stage? What can those users do that don't use SS4 but some earlier versions? (no, I'm not one of those)

And What about the installation routine - does it still overwrite all settings? My colleague still uses Microstation SS4 for 3d purposes because it is WAY more stable and quicker than CE without any hiccups. Needing to install SS10 would mean half a day of work just to get all the settings back.

f.mandoki said:

Needing to install SS10 would mean half a day of work just to get all the settings back.

Which settings?

Custom toolboxes, links to function keys, dgnlib settings, you name it. We never managed to just install a new V8i version over an existing one without losing all personal settings. We did backup the old ones but some stuff we still needed to adjust.

Without knowing your V8i Installation setup, what I can tell you is that custom user settings & company standards are easily reinstated after an upgrade installation with next to no downtime at all. Typically your V8i Workspace folder will reside on a mapped network drive on a file server, this won't be modified in any way during installation of SS10. All those settings you mentioned are It's also common to have a custom shortcut with a command switch to tell MicroStation where your settings are stored (If you are unfamiliar with this, Open the V8i Help/Programmed Customizations/Command Line Arguments).

As an example, if I were to uninstall V8i SS4 and install SS10, once the installation is complete, the only thing I will have to do is open the properties of my custom shortcut and verify that the folder path to Ustation.exe is the same as it was to SS4. If its not, I just change it to what it needs to now be. Then I load MicroStation with the custom shortcut, open a dgn file  and all my own user settings and company settings (not that I have any need for those currently!) are loaded and just as they were with SS4. The only loss of time is the time to uninstall SS4 and install SS10.

Without knowing your V8i Installation setup, what I can tell you is that custom user settings & company standards are easily reinstated after an upgrade installation with next to no downtime at all. Typically your V8i Workspace folder will reside on a mapped network drive on a file server, this won't be modified in any way during installation of SS10. All those settings you mentioned are It's also common to have a custom shortcut with a command switch to tell MicroStation where your settings are stored (If you are unfamiliar with this, Open the V8i Help/Programmed Customizations/Command Line Arguments).

As an example, if I were to uninstall V8i SS4 and install SS10, once the installation is complete, the only thing I will have to do is open the properties of my custom shortcut and verify that the folder path to Ustation.exe is the same as it was to SS4. If its not, I just change it to what it needs to now be. Then I load MicroStation with the custom shortcut, open a dgn file  and all my own user settings and company settings (not that I have any need for those currently!) are loaded and just as they were with SS4. The only loss of time is the time to uninstall SS4 and install SS10.

Or amend mslocal.cfg to point at the network workspace. A new install will overwrite it but you can just copy your custom version back over it.

Personally, I would advise against doing this as its not recommended to edit any of the default config files.

Instead, copy the mslocal.cfg to a suitable location in your custom Workspace and edit it as needed. It is this file which immediately pointed to by the command switch that i mentioned in my previous post (using -WC command switch).

We don't use workspaces. Tried to introduce these but we use a mix of V8i SS4 and CE and I've been told that it's not possible to mix these setups using the same workspaces. In the end we just lacked time to investigate any further. It's always tough enough to find the right time to upgrade with ongoing projects.

Its extremely advisable that you do use them. If you aren't it sounds like each user has to replicate the same company settings manually as well as having their own custom settings. That scenario leads to lack of consistency between users and more difficult to manage compared to a networked workspace.

However, you cannot use 1 set of settings for both V8i and CONNECT so you need to keep separate folders. Sure some of the customised files will be duplicated however there are some files which are in a slightly different format in CONNECT than they are in V8i e.g. definition files (Scale/Sheet Sizes/Units etc...)

I don't want to go into the details as to why we don't use them, just not enough time to explain. It has something to do with how our data is structured on our server and how much time we have spare to implement this properly (I mean honestly, how often will we update V8i at all in the future). I discussed this in some old threads already and also in-house and we decided to wait until we can all switch to CE.