How to modify shared cells that have tags

Revision Date: February 14, 2010

I tested this workflow with V8i (verified it also working in XM Editon) . It even works in DWG-files directly....

1. Export your shared cells including those with any tags into a cell library
2. KEYIN: export cells shared e.g. mysharedcells.cel
3. Open this file and edit the cells models there as desired
4. Go back to the original drawing
5. Attach that celllibrary (mysharedcells.cel)
6. Select all the shared cells you like to change (Ctrl+A will do for ALL)
7. Use the command Replace cell with the options Update and single > Accept the Selection Set with a datapoint.

You can use the resulting library with any file that needs these cells to be replaced.

Tipp (added July 2015): If you have normal cells with tags you need to save your file as DWG first to get them all as shared cells.

The original article still may be required with previous versions.

Original Article Date: June 7, 2005 

The following tutorial was inspired by a recent user posting to Bentley’s discussion groups questioning how to edit shared cells. Specifically, shared cells with tags. With thanks to Scott Harmon of BETA Design, Gerald Hernandez, and Bentley’s Brien Bastings for contributing to this article.

To follow along with this tutorial, start by downloading and opening the sample file that you’ll find in 252.zip.

First, a couple of things about this file…it was once a DWG. This can be verified by looking at the Statistics tab of the File > Properties dialog.

The file contains one tag set called RoomNum that contains a single tag with the name of NUM as shown below.

And there’s one shared cell called R2 that has the above tag attached to it.

The object in this lesson is to change the graphic of the room numbers from a shape with chamfered corners to one with rounded corners.

Sounds simple enough, but have you ever tried to edit a shared cell with tags before? What you may have tried in the past is to drop the shared cell down to it’s geometry, but doing that will delete the tag as shown below:

First select the shared cells needing to be modified, and un-associate the tags by using the keyin change tags dropassoc. Notice my use of the keyin: level element select "room numbers" to select all the elements on the level called Room Numbers. For more information about selecting elements on specific levels, refer to the following: Select All Elements on Active Level

Once this keyin has been executed you’ll notice some weirdness happening. Essentially, by dropping the association of the tags to the shared cells they are now orphan tags. Orphan tags will always display the tag name, which in our case is NUM rather than the entered values such as 1004. In addition to this, orphan tags are always visible even if it never had a value in the first place.

At this point you can delete the existing shared cells and replace the graphics with the new shape provided in the file. Alternatively, you could also drop the shared cells down to their geometry and modify the graphics manually as needed. It really all depends upon what your needs are. Notice my use of the keyin level element delete "room numbers" For more information about this, refer to the following: ***Keyin to delete level contents***

The last thing to do is to reassociate the tags to the new shapes. This is done by putting a tag into a selection set and executing the keyin change tags reassoc followed by a datapoint on it's corresponding shape. In doing so, your tag value will magically reappear. Of course, if your dealing with multiple tags on a single element, be sure to first select them all before executing the noted keyin.

AskInga Article #252