How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 19:41:29 GMT

Well, I am trained in ACad and I still think I like ACad more at heart. "cp" was just about the most used thing you have within ACad so you have that.

I will deal with my CAD manager another day.

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Lorys — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 03:15:05 GMT

ok , that is helpful to know especially if another user does a search to fix similar problem.. FYI I give up using mstn for indented para's it looks perfect in editor and then comes out wrong on screen or the opposite... just takes too darn long IMHO....

You might also like to use the align tool to get things perfect under the copy tools... I've never tried copy parallel for text. weird as I have been using msnt for almost 30 years over at least 4 different disciplines in my work life and never tried it and I've used lots of tools that most everyday civil drafters never use...especially in the mapping world.

But I do use the Align a lot especially text... play with great feature.... it might help get thing even more perfect for your CAD manager ( he's probably using autocad driven standards haha!)

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 02:36:48 GMT

Sure. I mean, the CAD standards guy at the office is super picky and he wanted specific line spacing between those titles and all that. It makes it difficult to conform if I do it with one single node and I understand what you are trying to say there, but it just won't fly because of him. I just got commented by him the other day that I am not following the convention of having the notes above the title block and the numbering section above notes - turned around to find that it was like that during the last revision he did himself. I am not going to argue with him just for the sake of it. Not that I cannot, I just don't want to.

In terms of what I did to resolve it, essentially, the text selection always flows by your sequence of creation. So, I typically use copy parallel to copy the sequence I want certain texts to appear in for ease of use for our drawing users (I work with standard drawings, so our drawings are used by a lot of people. I try to make it as user friendly as possible). Initially, I was doing the copy paste starting the from the start of the page, but with the text lines glitching that way, I really just need to start from the end of all the text instead and it will at least, semi work.

For example, if these numbers below are text nodes at their proper places,

_______________________

| 1 4 7 |

| 2 5 8 |

| 3 6 9 |

---------------------------------------

Initially, I was copying parallel 1 -> 9 to the side, and move it into place. What I needed to do then is copy parallel from 9 -> 1. That way, when you select things, at least all the rows will flow properly, like when I select text from say, 2-8, it will flow from the correct rows like it would for a word document, and that's helpful with notes pages.

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Lorys — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 02:13:21 GMT

I think you interpeting me too literally ... try to use ONE big fat text node not several small ones. .that can't possibly be a cad standard infringement.. text is just text as to using word just use it to type in and layout then copy paste into mstn word processor and change the font again this can't possibly be cad stand infringement... but anyway if you found a better way please publish in detail here and show how as lots of us users will benefit from what you found as we all have issues with this kind of thing .. I don't like having to go outside mstn to get it to work... but sometimes you just got to get it out the door by close of business and you can't take anymore time to figure it out ... one can't always sleep on it right?

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 14:48:41 GMT

Actually, I figured out how to do it after sleeping on it a day.

If the text goes from bottom line to the top, then let live. I can just use reverse creation sequencing to force correct direction. It worked. Case closed.

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 14:44:04 GMT

Can't do, I don't control our CAD standards...

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Lorys — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 11:07:24 GMT

[quote userid="431855" url="~/products/microstation/f/microstation-forum/208573/how-to-make-text-blocks-flow-properly-top-to-bottom/629741"]Will there be an effective way to resolve this problem? Or is it just a Microstation bug[/quote]

When I have to do this kind of thing I do it in Word first and either paste it direct in the text editor or use paste special and embed it so it lives in the file especially if I'm getting stuck with the indenting.. ( should be easy in mstn but I never seem to get it perfect like in word).

Make sure in the place text dialog you untick applies all text and you can then have large and small text same fonts helps but its best to use the same font in both word and mstn say eg Arial. When you paste it it should be ONE big text node not several.. I think that's where your having your difficulty.. I have done both methods in this here in image from a pdf (attached) of my dgn left side copy paste into text editor and right side embedded paste special..

I like the paste special for word, and excel because you can edit it in place and it lives inside the dgn and if you send to clients you need only send the dgn.

communities.bentley.com/.../5543.test.pdf

I did it pretty rough but you can see format is preserved in both ways...

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Jon Summers — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 10:03:28 GMT

[quote userid="4904" url="~/products/microstation/f/microstation-forum/208573/how-to-make-text-blocks-flow-properly-top-to-bottom/629739"]I think you will need to point to exactly what is happening to this text as I cannot see what you're trying to explain. Maybe if you supplied an example design file?[/quote]

I agree: the screenshots don't help to explain the unwelcome text behaviour.

[quote userid="431855" url="~/products/microstation/f/microstation-forum/208573/how-to-make-text-blocks-flow-properly-top-to-bottom/629741"]imagine you have a word document, you select text and it flows around the page[/quote]

MicroStation is not a word processor. It's a spatial editor. Blocks of text (text elements? text nodes?) are not connected. You can't select mutiple text elements and pretend that they form a paragraph.

Post a DGN example with text that illustrates your problem. You've redacted confidential information, so it might be best if you were to prepare a test case and attach that DGN file to your post here.

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:53:27 GMT

So, the problem isn't that it wasn't displaying fine. This isn't a display problem. We are NOT talking about display order if that is what I was not being clear about.

Essentially, imagine you have a word document, you select text and it flows around the page, typically from when you start dragging to where you release your click drag. For example, if I select text on this webpage, it will select stuff that goes where you start selecting, to where you end selecting. I have screenshot it below with red marks showing how I click dragged my cursor to select what I wanted to.

The issue becomes, how microstation text gets organized within the PDF file when I plot multiple blocks of text for note pages. For instance, I zoomed in further for this one paragraph here that I have plotted from Micro. I have used red arrows to mark the click drag operation, with the start of the arrow at my start of drag and tip of the arrow at the end. It might look normal at the first glance, but look closer - the text selected doesn't flow right. English doesn't go right-to-left, it should have gone left-to-right.

So, this can be caused by the text thinking that we are in an RTL instead of LTR language. But after some testing, that is not the case. The problem appears to be caused by the plot of the block of text (PDF) from microstation has started these texts from the last line of the node instead of the first. Which, brings us back to what I showed within my first example.

Here, you can easily see 3 "titles" for each "block" of text. The body are all one single node, whereas the title is another node, making the total number of text nodes here 6. I have ordered the text nodes by creation sequencing, so that it flows according to the page. In here, I click dragged from the middle of the first paragraph (i.e. text node # 2 per sequence), to the middle of the last paragraph (i.e. text node # 6 per sequence). Ideally, what should happen is that the pink box below gets selected, but as you can see, the selection is totally off. And with how the selection ran within our example here, it is not an LTR vs RTL text flow problem. It will appears that Micro just simply took the last line of the text node as start, and start of the text node as end.

Will there be an effective way to resolve this problem? Or is it just a Microstation bug?

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Andrew Bell — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:32:37 GMT

At first glance from this example you provided it appears to be displaying fine. I think you will need to point to exactly what is happening to this text as I cannot see what you're trying to explain. Maybe if you supplied an example design file?

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

I S Chan — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:09:27 GMT

As you can see within picture, some blue text has been highlighted. That is what happens when I select from that first paragraph to the last paragraph. It doesn't make sense at the first glance, but then you quickly realize that what it's doing is it took the end of block of node as the start and flipped it over. Make sense?

My version is 08.11.09.459.

RE: How to make text blocks flow properly top to bottom

Andrew Bell — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 23:46:10 GMT

Would you be able to provide details of the version of MicroStation you are currently using. It would also be helpful if you could provide an example or screen capture to help explain what is happening in relation to this query.

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