Report manager - References list extraction

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.

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

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.

Barry Lothian said:

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.

Mangesh.Shelar said:

You cannot get a hierarchical report using the available properties in the Reports Dialog

Barry Lothian said:

I would write a VBA project to automate the process

It looks like an app or AddIn is required to harvest reference data in the way you propose.

Lorys said:

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

Excel would be a useful tool to present the results.  But, since there's no way to export reference hierarchy without the help of an app or AddIn, Excel can't magically create that structure.

Hi Jon,

Thank you for your answer. I am trying to run the macro "LogRefs.mvba" but it returns the "Interface not registered" error.

Do you Know how can I solve it?

I use MicroStation CONNECT Edition Update 16 - Version 10.16.00.80, on Windows 10 Pro OS 64 bit.

Kind Regards,

Antonio

Jon Summers said:

Excel would be a useful tool to present the results.  But, since there's no way to export reference hierarchy without the help of an app or AddIn, Excel can't magically create that structure.

I did a bit of initial testing and managed to get directly attached reference files to be read without issue, I never got around to dealing with the nested attachments as other stuff needs my attention. Works fine so far and quite fast:

The Reference Dialog of the processed file:

Jon Summers said:

Excel would be a useful tool to present the results.  But, since there's no way to export reference hierarchy without the help of an app or AddIn, Excel can't magically create that structure.

I did a bit of initial testing and managed to get directly attached reference files to be read without issue, I never got around to dealing with the nested attachments as other stuff needs my attention. Works fine so far and quite fast:

The Reference Dialog of the processed file: