Change how Shared Cells Behave

CR 962372 has been filed on this issue.

Hi Joseph,

These are sounds idea suggestions but one thing to be considered is the impact on legacy data. We would have to consider this and the behavior of current cell functionality when evaluating this feature request.

Regards,

Regie

The 2 main problems are, being forced to have a level property on shared cells and not being able do a Replace Cells with shared cells as the option.  I agree that a 1 Gig file is not common and there is sometimes a better way to be handling that (referencing for example). 

I cant think of a reason why you would want shared cells to have a level.  Any thoughts on the purpose or use of that?  Or if it needs a level, can we have a (None) option so the levele of the shared cell instance doesnt affect by-level?

I agree with Oto that shared cells are not well enough supported by MicroStation tools. Normal cells are "native" to MicroStation, but to manage shared cells is confusing sometimes.

Comment to Problem 3:

you have to replace them one at a time. I have not tested it, but it's probably true. The problem is that the conversion is not simple process, because there can be different normal cells with the same name in DGN model, so the conversion requires to check whether the cell are exactly the same before they will be "unified" as shared cells with one common definition. But it's code implementation issue, not functional.

Its so time consuming it isnt worth it when you file is 1 Gig. The question is whether to have 1 GB file is the right approach. But it does not change anything on the requirement to better support shared cells ;-)

Some files become 20% the original size. No magic happens in MicroStation and there are always both pros and cons. When you will decrease the size because of using shared cells, you have to pay it somewhere else. In V8 the shared cells caused many problems during the visualization, because they increases memory consumption rapidly (every shared cell, consuming a few bytes in DGN file, has to be "expanded" into cell geometry in memory). In CONNECT Edition, because of 64bit memory addressing, the memory is smaller problem, but I guess (no hard facts based on testing available) there is probably a difference between normal and shared cells processing in terms of memory consumption and performance.

Regards,

  Jan

There are no problems with shared cells as a concept but there are lot of issues with using them in DGN workmode because the interface is very hard to use and many tools doesn't work with them. I disagree that normal cells are preffered they are preffered mainly because it is very hard to use Shared cells in DGNs.

1. No option to convert to shared cells without workarounds or macros.

2. Update cells tool doesn't update shared cells from library.What I mean is that update tool takes shared cell definition from file and not from library. So in case cell is edited in library it is troublesome to change it in file. 

3. No easy interface to edit embedded shared cells.

4. If there are existing shared cell in file then placing new cell it is not replaced by library copy but local. This is confusing.

5. If normal cells are not identical and converted to shared cells then Microstation auto renames them without asking.

6. No global lock for shared cells. The checkbox in Cell library is not the right place for this as there is no notice in main window that Shared cell workmode is on.

7. Merging DGN and DWG files creates mix of shared and normal cells. This is not actually a shared cell issue but more a compatibility issue when converting files from DGN/DWG. I would like to see more intelligence behind that, at least ask user to make a choice. Also Remap tool is missing Cell option it only allows rename cells for v7.