By Bentley Technical Support Group
11 October 2004

To ensure a perfect representation of Chinese characters within MicroStation, you will need the respective Chinese fonts and an Input Method Editor (IME) that accepts input from a Chinese character keyboard. These settings can be changed at both the system and MicroStation levels.

To set up at the operating system level (Windows 2000 and Windows XP)

Go to Settings -> Control Panel -> "Regional & Language Options"

1. INSTALL THE CHINESE FONTS: In the Languages tab, tick the Install files for East Asian Languages box. Hit "Apply." You will be prompted to enter the Windows 2000/XP install CD and this will install the Chinese fonts into c:\windows\fonts.
   If required, you could also set the Language Bar to Chinese. This allows the input or "building" of Chinese characters using an English keyboard.
   
2. INSTALL THE CHINESE LANGUAGE: In the Languages tab, click on "Details." You are now in the Text Services and Input Languages dialog.
   Click on "Add."
   
3. Select "Chinese (PRC)" as you input Language and Chinese (Simplified) MicroSoft PinYin IME 3.0 (or other) selection as "Keyboard layout/IME:"
   You may like to add further capability, such as [Input language] Chinese (Taiwan) [Keyboard layout/IME] MicroSoft New Phonetic IME 2002a to extend the Chinese Characters available.
4. Ensure you have your default language is still set as English (US/Australian).
   
5. After you make these changes, reboot your computer.

To set up at the MicroStation level

In the mslocale.cfg (...\Bentley\Program\MicroStation\config\system) remove the # from the following to the appropriate Chinese locale:

# MS_RTCONFIG = SimpChinese

# MS_RTCONFIG = TradChinese

# MS_RTCONFIG = HongKongChinese

MicroStation/J still requires the user to install the font (Utilities->Install Fonts) into a resource library, such as font.rsc. This applies to both shx and TTFs. The filename and path defined in the MS_SYMBRSRC variable must point to this library.

We recommend creating a separate resource file for your Chinese fonts. This will mean that editing MicroStation/J files in MicroStation V8 will not require font number remapping if the file needs to be saved back down to MicroStation/J. All you need to do is make sure your MicroStation V8 has access to the same font library as MicroStation/J.

MicroStation V8/2004

With the support of TrueType fonts natively in MicroStation V8, installing Chinese font libraries is no longer necessary. Having installed Asian fonts earlier (see Step 2), MicroStation can simply access the following examples straight from your Windows Fonts directory. Gungsuh, MingLiU, SimHei, and SimSum are examples of Chinese TTFs.

This will allowed users to cut and paste special text to design file from a Word doc and have the characters display correctly in MicroStation. This also allows users to type directly in the language bar and paste into the MicroStation text window.

Chinese characters and DWG

The easiest way to use an AutoCad .SHX font is to set up a text style with simplex.shx as small font and tradchbig.shx as big font. MicroStation provides tradchbig.shx at the installation stage. Tick "Traditional Chinese" Additional Font Files when prompted during your MicroStation setup.

AutoCAD prompts the user to specify a big font whenever the big font is missing. MicroStation has a defined default font called chineset.shx. (This chineset.shx is used only if MS_RTCONFIG is set accordingly). Be aware that MicroStation and AutoCAD can have different default display characters. The default substitution character differs; AutoCAD substitutes missing characters with spaces, while MicroStation V8 replaces them with question marks.

See also

Other language sources