Display / Restore the Tool Settings dialog

Background

Sometimes the Tool Settings dialog can be closed by chance or moved outside of the accessible screen area and cannot be easily restored or moved back into the working screen area.

Steps to Accomplish

Option 1: Toggle the Tool Settings option

1. Open the "Settings" menu

2. Make sure that "Tool Settings" is enabled / ticked.

3. If Tool Settings is still not displayed try in-toggling / re-toggling the above menu option

Alternatively, you can press the F10 function key (assuming the Function Key menu has not been changed for this key)
With PopSet enabled, in V8i and earlier you can also use CTRL+SPACEBAR, to have the Tool Settings dialog (re-)display at your cursor location.

Option 2: Reset the User Preference File

Sometimes the Tool Settings dialog can disappear or get located outside the viewable and accessible screen area when the user preference file (.upf file) becomes corrupted.

In this cases we can create a new MicroStation User from MicroStation Manager or force MicroStation to recreate a new .upf file for an existing MicroStation user.

Please bear in mind that resetting the .upf file will restore all User preferences to factory defaults and should be done only when no other option works or is available or where loosing current user preferences is not an issue.

It is imperative that you close all open instances of MicroStation, when required by the procedure here below, in order
for them to work.

To re-create a new clean user preferences file for the active MicroStation User:

1. Open MicroStation with any file and open MicroStation’s Key-in panel (Utilities->key-in)

2. Type the following string in MicroStation’s key-in panel and press enter: 

$ % explorer $(_USTN_HOMEPREFS)

3. This will open your user preferences folder in windows explorer

4. Close MicroStation but keep the windows explorer window open.

5. MOVE (not just copy) the whole content of this folder - including all subfolders - into some other safe folder for backup.

6 . Restart MicroStation

See Also

How to Back Up and Restore User Preferences

How to Copy User Preferences and User Configuration Files to a new or different PC

The User Preference File [UPF]

Keyins to toggle dialogs and toolboxes (pre-V8)

Other language sources