EDIT: SOME OF THIS BUGS ARE FIXED IN CONNECT, ILL MARK THEM AS i FIND THEM FIXED OR NOT
Hello.
I had been some years without doing much Microstation until recently where I had to go back again full gas into it. This report is written on Select Series and some stuff may have been fixed on the Connect. Yet, the time I tested on connect several things where still glitched.
This time I've been doing mostly 3d mesh modelling, so I may have forgotten other issues not so tied to this topic.
CELLS
***When creating a cell, the original entities in design space do not become the created cell, the cell is just generated in library, how annoying is that!***SUPER IMPORTANT ---> Cells can not be edited in context!! This is incredibly annoying and limiting, should be editdable as when "activate" and external ref. This was and it is the major drawback from AutoCad I found when migrated. Basically the only 2 things MS is worse than ACAD are in place cell editing and paper space preparation.
***3dcell placement is very raw, should be so that up axis is always up and not allways placed as top view despite the view could be in not top view.***If you update a 3d cell that contains meshes that have been mirrored, the normals are flipped and the color itself is darker, in short feels messed up.***If you update a cell globally, if cell is part of a group, it does not update.(!!)***If you update a cell globally during a display set, all the cells make into the display set.***renamed cells can not be updated globally, replace is needed.***editing cells in the .cel archive is a nightmare, microstation becomes extremelly slopy. EDIT: unconfirmed but I think its slopy only when "open for editing", if you open .cel directly seems to work ok!
***Nested cells are managed in an ankward fashion. Lets say cell_B is an small cell containing a 3d nut. If we place severall cell_B and pack everythin in a new cell named cell_A. WHen opening for editing Cell_A, all cell_B instances are not shown as a cell but as the object type they're, like a 3d mesh, its not just htat but they can´t be moved nor deleted. If back into the original design if we place cell_A and we drop it, then yes the nuts are represented as cell_B. When editing cell_A, cell_B instances should be kept as cells, and should be editable, wether moveable or delete-able.In addition, when editing cell_A if whe self attach the cell library and we do insert cell_B nuts ino the design space, they're kept as cell entities, even in future edits of the .cel file, allowing for moving the nested cell aswell as deleting, which should be the behaviour in any case.
EDIT: I just noticed that the nested cells are treated as attachments on .cel file. ok now I can move or delete theese. :D Still its a bit rigid as compared to moving rotating a regular/cell
3D view navigation***rotate about/center view on selected element without having to manually set rotation point, other programs do this on a simple key press***There is no proper WASD mouse fly trought / inspection, we're in 2020!!!!!***Rotate around gizmo is bugged when "activate" on reference. This defeats all the good of activating a 3d reference. You can not modify the rotation gizmo. Also if you zoom out it kind of goes nowhere and content is lost. --> briefly you barely can edit an activated 3d reference. This is extremelly annoying.
update-->suprisingly, when dealing with self attachments like attaching another model from the same file, the gizmo can be moved without issues, properly snapping to active reference geometry
3D modelling***surface by extrusion along will not work if path is on an external reference even if "keep path" is checked***"solid by thicken surface" should require an snap point to do the extrusion when "thickness" is not set beforehand, this is because without snap point ressults are not accurate unless you lock to an acudraw axe. the similar "surface by extrusion" does it right.***"solid by thicken surface" has no option to place created element into active layer/properties
***no material assign to selected faces***no detach selected faces (added later on Connect I believe, but with poor face selection tools)***"facet smoothing" should be aplicable also to only a selected set of faces***no backfacecull view mode (really needed for realtime exports)***acudraw 3d rotations--> you can not lock a plane for 3d rotations and get a virtual reference point as target without the lock plane unlocking. Forces to create auxiliary geometry. I believe this has to be a bug since virtual lines are rendered during rotation process.
***if 2 meshes of different wire color are merged, each color is kept and level color is ignored even if forced to override by manually set color by level.if this is to be considered to somehow be a "feature" it should be exploitable as with detach by wire color or similar.
***no selection at vertex level for more than one vertex. If drag tool is meant to do so, drag tool is a complete mess. Something similar to "editmesh"editpoly" from 3dmax is needed.
***intersection snap is needed, computing intersection as a tool itself for extending a line till a surface is an overkill. the trick I do is that if surface is aligned with any predefined view I switch to it and snaps do work but usually that is not the case
***no uv map editor--> basic editor should be, basic uvmapping projections flatten, box mapping, relax etc, packing...(considering how many other things need to be fixed this fall into nice to have category)
CONNECT***Its annoying that task hotkeys do change between Descartes v8i etc. for instance measure D1, M1, F1...
***UI takes more vertical space even with ribbon minimized, everything feels bulkier.
***Allow to COMPLETELLY HIDE ribbon and enable menu like in V8i please please please. and keep the tasks. ***Snap icons looks absolutelly horrible, WTH is that, Microstation for DOS?!
MISC
***PDF is allowed to attach as "reference" but they won´t be displayed. They need to be attached as raster vector or img.
***dropping cell in display set removes elements from display set, and does not leave them selected so you can bring them back with "add" command,in a similar fashion droping a group removes elements from display set, at least theese are left selected and can be brought back, yet...
above feature has been added in Connect, tested in update 14
***with several isolated linestrings, when dropping any, makes it dissapear from the displayset.
***uniformity on attached file rewiring:Raster--->right click-->file name-->Click on Magnifying iconAttachment-->double click--->Click on "Browse"but (this is the good way as its faster)
***Rotate-->Method-->Active Angle, when doing this operation in 3D the axis of reference is the last one used with the accudraw. Tool should allow to modify this on the fly. "rotate reference" has X Y Z inputs, it could be a good way to implement, also rotate and rotate reference could be same method as having to run the rotate method form the "reference manager" its not the most convenient thing. You could lock attachment transformations with a property to avoid accidental transforms. Pretty much what raster attachment already allow.
***In the reference manager, a self attachment of a different model than current, if model space changes name it does not update in the reference manager, at least not in the same session, have not checked on restart. There should be a callback and should auto update.
***If model space name is changed from a model that has not it referenced, once going to a model with that namechanged model space reference, the reference is broken. This should not be name based but internally with autoid tied.
***Reference manager shows XYZ offsets for position but only one Rotation value, why not XYZ rotation? same option should be for scale.
***In an reference that has nested references. If you enable the root reference for editing from another drawing where it is attached, it does not allow to move/transform the nested references.Example I've a 3d composition of a bridge, composition is made out of attachment of other files. If I attach the composition of the bridge I can not move the parts from the drawing I'm attaching the bridge composition even if I "activate" the composition reference.
***Selected reference in model space is not highlighted as selection in the Reference Manager. unlike happens with rasters.
***It would be usefull if without being in a displayset we could hide the selected objects as if in displayset with --Dispplayset-->Remove -- the remove event would create a displayset itself with the rest of the active elements, should be easy to implement and would be very handy.
** from the past experiences, paper space windows setup is a nightmare, its one of the few things Autocad does it better. Please implement like Autocad or at least give option to be like in there. A hole that its a windows to design space, rather than attaching whole design space and clipping.
***pasting a picture from the clipboard when pasting its pasted in a horrible quality, 8 bit 1980 like quality
I hope this helps to improve the tool, tbh I've lost connection with this software since connect due to the wall built because of the radical UI swap. The only that allowed me to test it properly was enablitn the task and the searchbox that allow me to search the tools, lucky I know them all by name. NEw ui leave little room for exploring tools, its too rigid, aka "smart".
Yeah, you may need to update some of this for CONNECT.
I don't do any 3D modeling so I can't speak to any of that, but I could add a few items and argue others.
I LOVE MicroStation Sheet Models, and I like them better than AutoCAD "paper space". I find little difference between them, and sheet models are more versatile for what I prefer to do. In AutoCAD, paper space seems very static, and it is ONLY a window to the model space. With sheet models, I can move my sheet around if I like, scale it, rotate it, make it match the real world location of my design information. While that may not be anything you want to do, in my Civil world, it has been invaluable for retaining real-world coordinates for my sheet. We do most of our annotation in the sheets - not the design model, because there could be several sheets in the DGN with a certain amount of overlap. When things are "true size" and "in place", we don't have to worry about labels or dimensions accounting (or not!) for reference scaling. ORD is forcing us to go a different way...but there we still have a "true size/in place" reference attachment to annotate. I still haven't found that capability in AutoCAD Paper Space.
I do agree that I am not a fan of the ribbon. I don't like it in AutoCAD either...I don't like that certain tools are only easily available in certain "workflows" when I stand a good change of needing a tool whenever I want it. It takes up a lot of space, even minimized, and requires a fair amount of backstage customization.
The PDF attached as "reference" is annoying. If it's not allowed, then it shouldn't be allowed - 100%. I field more questions about attached PDFs that ALL come back to "It needs to be attached as a Raster".
I do like AutoCAD notes. I especially like the option to place the text first, or the leader first. Going back and forth between programs means a solid couple of hours of trying to place a Microstation note by leader first...and not being able to go back and add text when I realize I did it wrong.
MaryB
Power GeoPak 08.11.09.918Power InRoads 08.11.09.918OpenRoads Designer 2021 R2
Thanks for posting your suggestions all feed back is welcomed, indeed some of these have come up before such as " ***SUPER IMPORTANT ---> Cells can not be edited in context!! " this being posted in the Ideas section https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/i/data_interoperability/edit-cells-in-place please add your interest by voting this up.
Feel free to add other suggestions to the Idea's area for Product Management review.
Some points raised may already be addressed in the latest CONNECT Edition, or have Enhancements / Defects filed against them, others perhaps are workflow related , such as the "3dcell placement is very raw" where maybe the Place Cell Tool Setting 'Flatten' ( See https://docs.bentley.com/LiveContent/web/MicroStation%20Help-v16/en/PlaceActiveCell.html ) may be of help to orientate the cell to standard Views or use AccuDraw shortcuts 'O' followed by 'T' for top or 'F' for front during placement.
It may be easier for others to help, follow and comment on if the list was not so long, thus my suggestion would be to split this into separate threads if still relevant now that you have moved to the CONNECT Edition.