This Client Server article is republished in its entirety from 2003 for reference purposes.

By Michael Dougherty, Jr., Senior Analyst, Bentley Developer Support, Bentley Corporate Office
26 May 2003 Modified: 09 November 2005

May 26, 2003 -Bentley ProjectWise is the AEC content management solution for the engineering office. Users can consolidate decentralized engineering content into a single presentation to ensure that all project team members have access to the right data when they need it. ProjectWise is designed to handle MicroStation DGN and AutoCAD DWG files, as well as other business file formats.

PW_Attributes

PW_Attributes.mvba is a Microstation Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming example that utilizes a custom ProjectWise SDK dll called VbaHelper.dll. This example illustrates how to call into a custom ProjectWise dll, and extract and display the current document attributes information to the user. (An attribute is an identifying or descriptive property of a document.) Each ProjectWise document may have zero, one or more rows of attributes.

Click here to Download the example.

The ProjectWise SDK

The ProjectWise SDK is a complete set of C-style API (Application Programming Interface) client side libraries, documentation, and examples. It currently does not have a VB style API. However, just like any other limitation in VB/VBA, this can be overcome by calling functions exposed in a dll.

VbaHelper.dll

The VbaHelper.dll is the bridge used in this example to access the ProjectWise database management system (DMS). This example exports functions that allow interaction between ProjectWise and a MicroStation VBA example project, PW_Attributes.mvba.

PWGetDocumentIDs
PWGetDocumentIDs is one of the exposed functions in the VbaHelper.dll that will be used in the PW_Attributes.mvba. This function will return the document ID and project ID of the MicroStation design file that is currently open. The code has a check-in place to determine whether the current design file is checked out by the current user.

Looking at the code, notice that the function populates the ProjectID and DocumentID by calling the mcmMain_GetDocumentIdByFilePath() ProjectWise API library. This function is used to find the document and project ID by specifying its full document path.

/*----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
| name PWGetDocumentIDs
|
| author BSI 04/2003
|
| Description A function that will return the documents
| Project and Document ID.
|
| Return SUCCESS or error number
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------*/

LONG WINAPI PWGetDocumentIDs
(
TCHAR **fileName, /* i Design File Name */
LONG *ProjectID, /* o Project ID */
LONG *DocumentID /* o Document ID */
)

{
return mcmMain_GetDocumentIdByFilePath (*fileName, ProjectID, DocumentID);
}

PWGetDocumentAttributes

PWGetDocumentAttributes is another function that we expose in the VbaHelper.dll. This function, when given a document ID and a project ID, will extract the document attributes and populate the provided AttributeData variable with that attribute information specific to that document. This function utilizes a query that populates the ProjectWise global static buffer. The ProjectWise API offers a flexible mechanism for performing select-style queries against a datasource. Each datasource has its own temporary region (global buffer) where the results from queries are stored. Fields (properties) of selected rows (information records) can then be accessed using a corresponding data retrieval function. If a new select statement into a static buffer is performed, previous contents of that static data buffer are destroyed.

/*----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
| name PWGetDocumentAttributes
|
| author BSI 04/2003
|
| Description A function that will return the documents attributes.
|
| Return SUCCESS or -1 if error.
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------*/
LONG WINAPI PWGetDocumentAttributes
(
LONG ProjectID, /* i Project ID */
LONG DocumentID, /* i Document ID */
void **AttributeData /* o Document attributes */
)

{
CString message;
LONG status = SUCCESS;
LONG lEnvId = aaApi_GetEnvId (0);
LONG lTabNo = aaApi_GetEnvNumericProperty (ENV_PROP_TABLEID, 0);
LONG count = -1;
int rowCount = -1;

/* Select environment for given project */
status = aaApi_SelectEnvByProjectId (ProjectID);

if (status == -1 || status == 0)
{
return -1;
}
else
{
// Select the documents Attribute Data
rowCount = aaApi_SelectLinkDataByObject (
lTabNo, /* i Table identifier (required) */
AADMSLDT_DOCUMENT, /* iReference Item type */
ProjectID, /* i First item identifier */
DocumentID, /* i Second item identifier */
NULL, /* i Where statement (optional) */
&count, /* io Column count in lplColumnIds */
NULL, /* i Columns to fetch (NULL - all) */
0 /* i Flags (AADMSLDSF_XXX) */
);

if (rowCount <= 0)
return -1;

for (int colIndex= 0; colIndex
{
message += aaApi_GetLinkDataColumnStringProperty (LINKDATA_PROP_COLUMN_NAME, colIndex);
message += ": ";
message += aaApi_GetLinkDataColumnValue (0, colIndex);
message +="\n";
}// end for

_tcscpy ((TCHAR*)(*AttributeData), message);
}
return SUCCESS;
}

Looking at the MicroStation VBA Code

PWDocuments

PW_Attributes.mvba is made up of two modules and a form. The first module, PWDocuments, wraps around the VbaHelper.dll by simplifying and effectively hiding the implementation. This module has private functions and members that should only be manipulated through the public member function calls. Below is a list of the public functions and members available currently in the module.

Note that each function will return a status. If the status does not equal SUCCESS then the application should take the appropriate action and alert the user with information contained in the PWErrorNo and PWErrorDescription.

GetAttributes

GetAttributes, located in the Main subroutine, is the starting point of the PW_Attributes example. If the current document is one that is checked out from the ProjectWise database by the user the main module will proceed to open the PWAttribute_Form. The form is then populated with the document's attribute data by the functionality provided in the PWDocuments module.

Running the Example

Note: To run this example you will need to ensure that you have installed the ProjectWise SDK and Microsoft Visual C++, or Developer Studio to compile an executable dll.

Open the VbaHelper.dsw workspace and compile the VbaHelper.dll
Copy the VbaHelper.dll to the ..\Bentley\ProjectWise\bin directory
Create a blank MicroStation VBA project
Import the GetAttributes.bas, PWattribute_Form.frm, and PWDocuments.bas into the new MicroStation VBA project
Save the project to a directory with a file name of your choice
Start ProjectWise and open a MicroStation design file currently checked out from ProjectWise
Start the MicroStation VBA Project Manager, load and run your project

See Also

Using The ProjectWise API In VBA

Client Server Archive

MicroStation Desktop TechNotes and FAQs

Comments or Corrections?

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