Background Information

The question of how to simplify the creation of plots is often raised. If you want to create a plot, there are several steps that are generally necessary. If the plot is finished being created, there are often adjustments that were forgotten or steps performed incorrectly.

To prevent these problems, you can automate the settings.

MicroStation provides an example of a large amount of keyboard shortcuts that allow  full control of plots.

This is a simple example for creating PDF documents.

Steps

First of all, we have to find out which Key-in commands MicroStation provides for plotting.

All Key-in commands start with the keyword "print", but the list will be empty at first, shown below:

To display the list of commands, give the order "mdl load plotdlg":

In this example, I have used "silentload" rather than "load". These commands do the same thing, but "silentload" does not show a dialog box.

This is often desirable if you do not want the PlotPreview or for performance reasons.

After loading the application, all key-in commands will be displayed:

The individual Key-in Command can easily be combined with a macro. Here is a summary of Key-in Commands in a VBA macro. For this, the "CadInputQueue.SendKeyin" VBA command is needed to be able to run VBA Key-ins. In this example, the following steps were performed:

1. Select a driver. In this example, the PDF driver was used.
2. Select a paper size: In this example, ANSI D was used.

Customizing the plot on paper:

1. Maximize plot
2. Run the plot with the file-name of the PDF file using the VBA command from the current drawing name, model name, and extension.

Sub  printPDF ()
 
'All print load commands and view the Key-in dialog
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "mdl load plotdlg"
 
Select 'driver, here output to PDF
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "print driver pdf.pltcfg"
 
'Specify paper size
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "print paper-name ANSI D"
 
Fit 'drawing
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "print boundary fit all"
 
'Maximize plot size
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "print maximize"
 
'Output of the PDF file in the same path of the drawing with model name and extension PDF:
Dim  file-name As  String
dateiname = ActiveDesignFile.FullName + "--" + ActiveModelReference.Name + "-PDFPLOT.PDF"
CadInputQueue.SendKeyin "print execute " + dateiname
 
End Sub