Report manager - References list extraction

I have the following references hierarchy (first image) and I run the report manager obtaining the result showed in the second image. Now I wolud like to have a table sorted like the original hierarchy, with the nested references under the father, is it possible?

                                                 

  • Can it be exported to excel and use the excel tools to do it better?

    Sorry  I'm a beginner when it comes to connect and haven't  had enough training  or experience yet.. but have been using mstn for over 25 years... I don't think aggregation and sorting  is fully developed in CE yet but  to be fair I'm going off hearsay not fact checked but I know how to do this in excel... it might be a quick work around until you get definitive answer for CE.

    Lorys

    Started msnt work 1990 - Retired  Nov 2022 ( oh boy am I old )

    But was long time user V8iss10 (8.11.09.919) dabbler CE  update 16 (10.16.00.80) 

    MicroStation user since 1990 Melbourne Australia.
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  • Hi Lorys, 

    thank you for the reply, what you said was correct, unfortunately since the fact that the hierarchy could be completely random (has no rules or scheme) it could be difficult or impossible to create an excel routine that automaticly rebuilds the hierarchy, and you had to do it handly. For this reason I woluld like to extract the reference tree already sorted. 

    Kind regards, 

    Antonio

  • Hi Antonio,

    can you please specify what product and exact version do you use? To use tag CONNECT Edition is not enough, because e.g. for MicroStation CE, about 20 versions have been released so far, offering different sets of tools (and also bugs, unfortunately ;-)

    and I run the report manager

    Sorry, but there is no tool named "Report manager" in MicroStation CONNECT Edition.

    Can you confirm you mean Report, defined in Reports dialog and e.g. to provide more details how your report is defined?

    With regards,

      Jan

  • I've no idea if CONNECT edition can sort a report in the manner you seek but for the sake of discussion, I'll assume it cannot and suggest an alternative.

    You haven't stated what format the information is to be used as and also, how many files that you are looking to list each reference file and their nested references.

    If its just to create a list of text of text, something like:

    DGN File 1
    Parent Ref 1
    Nested Child Ref 1-1
    Nested Child Ref 1-2
    Parent Ref 2
    Parent Ref 3
    Nested Child Ref 3-1
    Nested Child Ref 3-2
    Nested Child Ref 3-3
    DGN File 2
    etc...

    If this was a task I had to do, I would write a VBA project to automate the process. This could be done either within MicroStation or Excel (the latter I would use if wanted to use a worksheet to display the output data not only at the final stage but at intermediate stages as well, which can be helpful).

    The VBA project would do something like the following:

      • Create a simple GUI via Userform to allow the user to Browse to a folder and select DGN Files to be processed
      • With this list of DGN files, recursively enumerate each DGN file to find its reference attachments and do the same for every reference attachment to find the nested attachments
      • Store the results of the search references initially as filenames with full paths in a multidimensional array
      • Once the array is populated, the data can be sorted & arranged programatically
      • Filenames would have their full path removed leaving only the base name
      • Sorted data could then be displayed in a worksheet or saved to a .txt or .csv file ready for its final use.
  • I would write a VBA project

    Here's a starting point: Reference Logging with MicroStation VBA.  The project is ancient and could do with an update.

     
    Regards, Jon Summers
    LA Solutions

    Answer Verified By: Antonio Commone