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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="https://communities.bentley.com/cfs-file/__key/system/syndication/rss.xsl" media="screen"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"><channel><title>Understanding working units in MicroStation V7 </title><link>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7</link><description>Articles previously found in the &amp;quot;AskInga&amp;quot; Community.</description><dc:language>en-US</dc:language><generator>Telligent Community 12</generator><item><title>Understanding working units in MicroStation V7 </title><link>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7</link><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:16:55 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">6dad98f5-dbc9-4c4d-a9ba-e9da8dc6aa8e:7051fb56-8f84-47b7-b8d5-72f3e4bb3424</guid><dc:creator>Jordan Stierly</dc:creator><comments>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7#comments</comments><description>Current Revision posted to [Archived] AskInga Wiki by Jordan Stierly on 6/9/2010 7:16:55 PM&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
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&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Original Article Date: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jan 30, 2001&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Learn all about MicroStation V7&amp;#39;s working units while drinking beer...or is that drinking units while working beer? 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="border-bottom:#cccccc 1pt solid;"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Authors Note:&lt;/em&gt; Portions of this article have appeared in the May 2000 issue of the &lt;em&gt;MicroStation Manager Magazine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If you think of your MicroStation design file as a huge piece of &amp;lsquo;grid&amp;#39; paper you&amp;#39;ll actually find it very easy to understand working units. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First of all we need to know that the design file in 2D is called a &lt;em&gt;Design Plane&lt;/em&gt; and is a fixed size of 4,294,967,296 units or &lt;strong&gt;positional units&lt;/strong&gt; along both the X and Y axis. In 3D the file is actually called a &lt;strong&gt;Design Cube&lt;/strong&gt; and the Z axis also has the same number of units. 
&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;td valign="top" align="top"&gt;&lt;img align="left" border="0" src="/askIngaPics/36Pic1.jpg" alt="" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
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&lt;td valign="top" align="top"&gt;&lt;img align="left" border="0" src="/askIngaPics/36Pic2.jpg" alt="" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
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&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
You can think of the &lt;em&gt;Positional Units (PU&amp;#39;s)&lt;/em&gt; as simply the distance between the grids on a piece of graph paper&amp;hellip;each unit being equal and fixed in size. In MicroStation the PU is the &lt;strong&gt;smallest measurable&lt;/strong&gt; distance that can be made. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table style="width:100%;" cellpadding="6" border="0"&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td valign="top" align="top"&gt;&lt;img align="left" border="0" src="/askIngaPics/36Pic3.jpg" alt="" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Imagine if you will that there are 4,294,967,296 of these little fixed units in the design plane/cube&amp;hellip;I would&amp;#39;ve drawn more but that would&amp;#39;ve been crazy! &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
OK, so now that the Positional Unit has been explained &amp;ndash; Let&amp;#39;s look at the Working Units&amp;hellip;you know&amp;hellip;That master unit and sub unit stuff!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Working Units&lt;/em&gt; in MicroStation is simply defining a relationship between the positional units and your preferred unit of measure &amp;ndash; say meters for instance. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Working units are file independent, can be set up on a per-file basis but are typically set up in your seed files. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To set up the working units go to &lt;em&gt;Settings &amp;gt; Design File &amp;gt; Working Units&lt;/em&gt;. Let&amp;#39;s take a look at how to define the working units of a metric design file: 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table style="width:100%;" cellpadding="6" border="0"&gt;
&lt;tbody&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td valign="top" align="top"&gt;&lt;img align="left" border="0" src="/askIngaPics/36Pic4.jpg" alt="" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
In the &lt;em&gt;Unit Names&lt;/em&gt; category the entry fields for Master Units and Sub Units are just one or two character &lt;strong&gt;labels&lt;/strong&gt; for your units of measure. For instance Meters &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; and Centimeters &lt;em&gt;cm&lt;/em&gt;, or Feet &lt;em&gt;ft&lt;/em&gt; and Inches &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;, or how about Cases of Beer &lt;em&gt;CB&lt;/em&gt; and Bottles of Beer &lt;em&gt;bb&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Resolution category is where we&amp;#39;re gonna specify how MicroStation is going to &lt;strong&gt;count&lt;/strong&gt; out the positional units and how they will be applied to your units of measure. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first field asks for the number of &lt;em&gt;sub-units per master unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;so we could fill 100 since there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter. Likewise, we would enter 12 for an imperial file set up in feet and inches. (How about 24 bottles of beer in 1 case?)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The second field requires a number that tells MicroStation &lt;em&gt;how many positional units to count to make one sub unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;keep in mind that the positional unit is the smallest measurable distance you can have. For our metric example we could use a value of 100, that would mean that there would be 100 pu&amp;#39;s in one centimeter thus allowing us to draw down to 1/100th of a cm!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The &lt;em&gt;Working Area&lt;/em&gt; category reports back to us how large of an area we now have to work with in master units. The more pu&amp;#39;s per su &amp;ndash; the smaller the working area and a finer resolution or accuracy can be obtained. This value is calculated by dividing 4,294,967,296 by (sub units X positional units). Even though this number changes when you change your resolution, the size of the design plane as expressed in positional units always remains the same &amp;ndash; 4,294,967,296 of them!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Well that&amp;#39;s about it. Ah, one last thing&amp;hellip;working units are most often set up in the seed file and normally should not be changed in mid-design. To do so will cause MicroStation to measure the elements differently and you may not be able to set it back. Also, after you have changed your working units do a &lt;em&gt;File &amp;gt; Save Settings&lt;/em&gt; or be sure to have &lt;em&gt;Save Settings on Exit&lt;/em&gt; enabled from &lt;em&gt;Workspace Preferences&lt;/em&gt;. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
AskInga Article #36 
&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;div style="font-size: 90%;"&gt;Tags: Askinga, Design Settings, Article&lt;/div&gt;
</description></item><item><title>Understanding Working Units in MicroStation V7 </title><link>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7/revision/3</link><pubDate>Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:41:22 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">6dad98f5-dbc9-4c4d-a9ba-e9da8dc6aa8e:7051fb56-8f84-47b7-b8d5-72f3e4bb3424</guid><dc:creator>Hannah Blye</dc:creator><comments>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7#comments</comments><description>Revision 3 posted to [Archived] AskInga Wiki by Hannah Blye on 6/20/2008 2:41:22 PM&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;a href="/Communities/Other_Communities/AskInga/default.aspx"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/askingalogo.gif" border="0" alt="AskInga logo" title="AskInga" width="230" height="76" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;Original Article Date: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jan 30, 2001&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Learn all about MicroStation V7's working units while drinking beer...or is that drinking units while working beer? 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="border-bottom: #cccccc 1pt solid"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Authors Note:&lt;/em&gt; Portions of this article have appeared in the May 2000 issue of the &lt;em&gt;MicroStation Manager Magazine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If you think of your MicroStation design file as a huge piece of &amp;lsquo;grid' paper you'll actually find it very easy to understand working units. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First of all we need to know that the design file in 2D is called a &lt;em&gt;Design Plane&lt;/em&gt; and is a fixed size of 4,294,967,296 units or &lt;strong&gt;positional units&lt;/strong&gt; along both the X and Y axis. In 3D the file is actually called a &lt;strong&gt;Design Cube&lt;/strong&gt; and the Z axis also has the same number of units. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic1.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
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&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic2.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
You can think of the &lt;em&gt;Positional Units (PU's)&lt;/em&gt; as simply the distance between the grids on a piece of graph paper&amp;hellip;each unit being equal and fixed in size. In MicroStation the PU is the &lt;strong&gt;smallest measurable&lt;/strong&gt; distance that can be made. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic3.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Imagine if you will that there are 4,294,967,296 of these little fixed units in the design plane/cube&amp;hellip;I would've drawn more but that would've been crazy! &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
OK, so now that the Positional Unit has been explained &amp;ndash; Let's look at the Working Units&amp;hellip;you know&amp;hellip;That master unit and sub unit stuff!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Working Units&lt;/em&gt; in MicroStation is simply defining a relationship between the positional units and your preferred unit of measure &amp;ndash; say meters for instance. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Working units are file independent, can be set up on a per-file basis but are typically set up in your seed files. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To set up the working units go to &lt;em&gt;Settings &amp;gt; Design File &amp;gt; Working Units&lt;/em&gt;. Let's take a look at how to define the working units of a metric design file: 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic4.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
In the &lt;em&gt;Unit Names&lt;/em&gt; category the entry fields for Master Units and Sub Units are just one or two character &lt;strong&gt;labels&lt;/strong&gt; for your units of measure. For instance Meters &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; and Centimeters &lt;em&gt;cm&lt;/em&gt;, or Feet &lt;em&gt;ft&lt;/em&gt; and Inches &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;, or how about Cases of Beer &lt;em&gt;CB&lt;/em&gt; and Bottles of Beer &lt;em&gt;bb&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Resolution category is where we're gonna specify how MicroStation is going to &lt;strong&gt;count&lt;/strong&gt; out the positional units and how they will be applied to your units of measure. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first field asks for the number of &lt;em&gt;sub-units per master unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;so we could fill 100 since there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter. Likewise, we would enter 12 for an imperial file set up in feet and inches. (How about 24 bottles of beer in 1 case?)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The second field requires a number that tells MicroStation &lt;em&gt;how many positional units to count to make one sub unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;keep in mind that the positional unit is the smallest measurable distance you can have. For our metric example we could use a value of 100, that would mean that there would be 100 pu's in one centimeter thus allowing us to draw down to 1/100th of a cm!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The &lt;em&gt;Working Area&lt;/em&gt; category reports back to us how large of an area we now have to work with in master units. The more pu's per su &amp;ndash; the smaller the working area and a finer resolution or accuracy can be obtained. This value is calculated by dividing 4,294,967,296 by (sub units X positional units). Even though this number changes when you change your resolution, the size of the design plane as expressed in positional units always remains the same &amp;ndash; 4,294,967,296 of them!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Well that's about it. Ah, one last thing&amp;hellip;working units are most often set up in the seed file and normally should not be changed in mid-design. To do so will cause MicroStation to measure the elements differently and you may not be able to set it back. Also, after you have changed your working units do a &lt;em&gt;File &amp;gt; Save Settings&lt;/em&gt; or be sure to have &lt;em&gt;Save Settings on Exit&lt;/em&gt; enabled from &lt;em&gt;Workspace Preferences&lt;/em&gt;. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
AskInga Article #36 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;div style="font-size: 90%;"&gt;Tags: Article, Askinga, Design Settings&lt;/div&gt;
</description></item><item><title>Understanding Working Units in MicroStation V7 </title><link>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7/revision/2</link><pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:40:58 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">6dad98f5-dbc9-4c4d-a9ba-e9da8dc6aa8e:7051fb56-8f84-47b7-b8d5-72f3e4bb3424</guid><dc:creator>Hannah Blye</dc:creator><comments>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7#comments</comments><description>Revision 2 posted to [Archived] AskInga Wiki by Hannah Blye on 6/11/2008 2:40:58 PM&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Learn all about MicroStation V7's working units while drinking beer...or is that drinking units while working beer? 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="border-bottom: #cccccc 1pt solid"&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Authors Note:&lt;/em&gt; Portions of this article have appeared in the May 2000 issue of the &lt;em&gt;MicroStation Manager Magazine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If you think of your MicroStation design file as a huge piece of &amp;lsquo;grid' paper you'll actually find it very easy to understand working units. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
First of all we need to know that the design file in 2D is called a &lt;em&gt;Design Plane&lt;/em&gt; and is a fixed size of 4,294,967,296 units or &lt;strong&gt;positional units&lt;/strong&gt; along both the X and Y axis. In 3D the file is actually called a &lt;strong&gt;Design Cube&lt;/strong&gt; and the Z axis also has the same number of units. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic1.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic2.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
You can think of the &lt;em&gt;Positional Units (PU's)&lt;/em&gt; as simply the distance between the grids on a piece of graph paper&amp;hellip;each unit being equal and fixed in size. In MicroStation the PU is the &lt;strong&gt;smallest measurable&lt;/strong&gt; distance that can be made. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic3.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Imagine if you will that there are 4,294,967,296 of these little fixed units in the design plane/cube&amp;hellip;I would've drawn more but that would've been crazy! &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
OK, so now that the Positional Unit has been explained &amp;ndash; Let's look at the Working Units&amp;hellip;you know&amp;hellip;That master unit and sub unit stuff!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Working Units&lt;/em&gt; in MicroStation is simply defining a relationship between the positional units and your preferred unit of measure &amp;ndash; say meters for instance. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Working units are file independent, can be set up on a per-file basis but are typically set up in your seed files. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
To set up the working units go to &lt;em&gt;Settings &amp;gt; Design File &amp;gt; Working Units&lt;/em&gt;. Let's take a look at how to define the working units of a metric design file: 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;table border="0" cellpadding="6" width="100%"&gt;
	&lt;tbody&gt;
		&lt;tr&gt;
			&lt;td align="top" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/36Pic4.jpg" border="0" align="left" /&gt; &lt;/td&gt;
		&lt;/tr&gt;
	&lt;/tbody&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
In the &lt;em&gt;Unit Names&lt;/em&gt; category the entry fields for Master Units and Sub Units are just one or two character &lt;strong&gt;labels&lt;/strong&gt; for your units of measure. For instance Meters &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; and Centimeters &lt;em&gt;cm&lt;/em&gt;, or Feet &lt;em&gt;ft&lt;/em&gt; and Inches &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;, or how about Cases of Beer &lt;em&gt;CB&lt;/em&gt; and Bottles of Beer &lt;em&gt;bb&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Resolution category is where we're gonna specify how MicroStation is going to &lt;strong&gt;count&lt;/strong&gt; out the positional units and how they will be applied to your units of measure. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The first field asks for the number of &lt;em&gt;sub-units per master unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;so we could fill 100 since there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter. Likewise, we would enter 12 for an imperial file set up in feet and inches. (How about 24 bottles of beer in 1 case?)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The second field requires a number that tells MicroStation &lt;em&gt;how many positional units to count to make one sub unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;keep in mind that the positional unit is the smallest measurable distance you can have. For our metric example we could use a value of 100, that would mean that there would be 100 pu's in one centimeter thus allowing us to draw down to 1/100th of a cm!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The &lt;em&gt;Working Area&lt;/em&gt; category reports back to us how large of an area we now have to work with in master units. The more pu's per su &amp;ndash; the smaller the working area and a finer resolution or accuracy can be obtained. This value is calculated by dividing 4,294,967,296 by (sub units X positional units). Even though this number changes when you change your resolution, the size of the design plane as expressed in positional units always remains the same &amp;ndash; 4,294,967,296 of them!&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Well that's about it. Ah, one last thing&amp;hellip;working units are most often set up in the seed file and normally should not be changed in mid-design. To do so will cause MicroStation to measure the elements differently and you may not be able to set it back. Also, after you have changed your working units do a &lt;em&gt;File &amp;gt; Save Settings&lt;/em&gt; or be sure to have &lt;em&gt;Save Settings on Exit&lt;/em&gt; enabled from &lt;em&gt;Workspace Preferences&lt;/em&gt;. 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
AskInga Article #36 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;div style="font-size: 90%;"&gt;Tags: &lt;tags&gt;&lt;/tags&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
</description></item><item><title>Understanding Working Units in MicroStation V7 </title><link>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7/revision/1</link><pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2008 13:15:13 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">6dad98f5-dbc9-4c4d-a9ba-e9da8dc6aa8e:7051fb56-8f84-47b7-b8d5-72f3e4bb3424</guid><dc:creator>Danielle Schutz</dc:creator><comments>https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/w/askinga/1089/understanding-working-units-in-microstation-v7#comments</comments><description>Revision 1 posted to [Archived] AskInga Wiki by Danielle Schutz on 5/23/2008 1:15:13 PM&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
&lt;img src="/askIngaPics/askingalogo.gif" border="0" alt="Ask Inga logo" title="Ask?Inga" width="230" height="76" /&gt; 
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;
Learn all about MicroStation V7's working units while drinking beer...or is that drinking units while working beer? 
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&lt;em&gt;Authors Note:&lt;/em&gt; Portions of this article have appeared in the May 2000 issue of the &lt;em&gt;MicroStation Manager Magazine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
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If you think of your MicroStation design file as a huge piece of &amp;lsquo;grid' paper you'll actually find it very easy to understand working units. &lt;br /&gt;
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First of all we need to know that the design file in 2D is called a &lt;em&gt;Design Plane&lt;/em&gt; and is a fixed size of 4,294,967,296 units or &lt;strong&gt;positional units&lt;/strong&gt; along both the X and Y axis. In 3D the file is actually called a &lt;strong&gt;Design Cube&lt;/strong&gt; and the Z axis also has the same number of units.&lt;br /&gt;
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You can think of the &lt;em&gt;Positional Units (PU's)&lt;/em&gt; as simply the distance between the grids on a piece of graph paper&amp;hellip;each unit being equal and fixed in size. In MicroStation the PU is the &lt;strong&gt;smallest measurable&lt;/strong&gt; distance that can be made.
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Imagine if you will that there are 4,294,967,296 of these little fixed units in the design plane/cube&amp;hellip;I would've drawn more but that would've been crazy! &lt;br /&gt;
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OK, so now that the Positional Unit has been explained &amp;ndash; Let's look at the Working Units&amp;hellip;you know&amp;hellip;That master unit and sub unit stuff!&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;Working Units&lt;/em&gt; in MicroStation is simply defining a relationship between the positional units and your preferred unit of measure &amp;ndash; say meters for instance. &lt;br /&gt;
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Working units are file independent, can be set up on a per-file basis but are typically set up in your seed files. &lt;br /&gt;
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To set up the working units go to &lt;em&gt;Settings &amp;gt; Design File &amp;gt; Working Units&lt;/em&gt;. Let's take a look at how to define the working units of a metric design file:&lt;br /&gt;
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In the &lt;em&gt;Unit Names&lt;/em&gt; category the entry fields for Master Units and Sub Units are just one or two character &lt;strong&gt;labels&lt;/strong&gt; for your units of measure. For instance Meters &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt; and Centimeters &lt;em&gt;cm&lt;/em&gt;, or Feet &lt;em&gt;ft&lt;/em&gt; and Inches &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt;, or how about Cases of Beer &lt;em&gt;CB&lt;/em&gt; and Bottles of Beer &lt;em&gt;bb&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;br /&gt;
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The Resolution category is where we're gonna specify how MicroStation is going to &lt;strong&gt;count&lt;/strong&gt; out the positional units and how they will be applied to your units of measure. &lt;br /&gt;
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The first field asks for the number of &lt;em&gt;sub-units per master unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;so we could fill 100 since there are 100 centimeters in 1 meter. Likewise, we would enter 12 for an imperial file set up in feet and inches. (How about 24 bottles of beer in 1 case?)&lt;br /&gt;
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The second field requires a number that tells MicroStation &lt;em&gt;how many positional units to count to make one sub unit&lt;/em&gt;&amp;hellip;keep in mind that the positional unit is the smallest measurable distance you can have. For our metric example we could use a value of 100, that would mean that there would be 100 pu's in one centimeter thus allowing us to draw down to 1/100th of a cm!&lt;br /&gt;
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The &lt;em&gt;Working Area&lt;/em&gt; category reports back to us how large of an area we now have to work with in master units. The more pu's per su &amp;ndash; the smaller the working area and a finer resolution or accuracy can be obtained. This value is calculated by dividing 4,294,967,296 by (sub units X positional units). Even though this number changes when you change your resolution, the size of the design plane as expressed in positional units always remains the same &amp;ndash; 4,294,967,296 of them!&lt;br /&gt;
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Well that's about it. Ah, one last thing&amp;hellip;working units are most often set up in the seed file and normally should not be changed in mid-design. To do so will cause MicroStation to measure the elements differently and you may not be able to set it back. Also, after you have changed your working units do a &lt;em&gt;File &amp;gt; Save Settings&lt;/em&gt; or be sure to have &lt;em&gt;Save Settings on Exit&lt;/em&gt; enabled from &lt;em&gt;Workspace Preferences&lt;/em&gt;. 
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AskInga Article #36
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