Attribute ID

Hi Ramesh,

RAMESH P K said:

Attached is the snap which shows the same

To share original DGN (or it's part extracted using e.g. file fence) is usually much better than any picture.

BTW Old style "analyze element" dialog often provides better overview of data attached to an element than modern style Element information dialog.

RAMESH P K said:

and hope you will understand that this is old time PDS DGN model.

From any picture or design file it's not possible to understand the source of data!

To distinguish where the data comes from, when technical details like used attribute ID is not known, requires a combination of:

• Explicit information how the design file was created.
• Analysis of the data attached to elements.

There have been thousands of applications developed for MicroStation and many of them attached own data to created elements (plus MicroStation does it also), so as you can see, they can be more different custom data attached to the same element.

RAMESH P K said:

Is there we can get at it?

Yes and no. When you are not author of the data and the data structure is not described publicly, it's about reverse engineering with unknown and not ensured result. But in the case of famous old applications like PDS you can find a lot of discussions about the same topic that can provide valuable inputs.

In addition to articles linked by Jon, I recommend to read also Unleashing Database Linkages In MicroStation wiki article.

Several different analysis have to be done to be able to access and use user attributes data created by 3rd party application. Important prerequisite is that you know the source (authoring) application.

In summary, to access, read and interpret user data created by 3rd party application, you have to analyze:

• Attribute ID used to identify the data. Be aware that some applications use several different records with different IDs, typically one with "own ID" (because IDs have been assigned 1 per company, not 1 per application) and others pointing e.g. to a database (with some default DB linkage ID).
• Used format, whether it's DB linkage, DMRS or User Data Linkage. The differences are described in the linked articles.
• Where the data are attached (to what element). Some applications attach custom data to cell header, some others to e.g. line representing pipe centerline, other combine different approaches.
• The data internal structure. This part is the most complex, because usually the data structure is not described anywhere. But for PDS, I assume you will be able to find at least some hints how to interpret the data. But at the end, it's about to process raw binary and VBA is not very good tool to do that, but it can be done.

With regards,

  Jan

Hi Ramesh,

RAMESH P K said:

Attached is the snap which shows the same

To share original DGN (or it's part extracted using e.g. file fence) is usually much better than any picture.

BTW Old style "analyze element" dialog often provides better overview of data attached to an element than modern style Element information dialog.

RAMESH P K said:

and hope you will understand that this is old time PDS DGN model.

From any picture or design file it's not possible to understand the source of data!

To distinguish where the data comes from, when technical details like used attribute ID is not known, requires a combination of:

• Explicit information how the design file was created.
• Analysis of the data attached to elements.

There have been thousands of applications developed for MicroStation and many of them attached own data to created elements (plus MicroStation does it also), so as you can see, they can be more different custom data attached to the same element.

RAMESH P K said:

Is there we can get at it?

Yes and no. When you are not author of the data and the data structure is not described publicly, it's about reverse engineering with unknown and not ensured result. But in the case of famous old applications like PDS you can find a lot of discussions about the same topic that can provide valuable inputs.

In addition to articles linked by Jon, I recommend to read also Unleashing Database Linkages In MicroStation wiki article.

Several different analysis have to be done to be able to access and use user attributes data created by 3rd party application. Important prerequisite is that you know the source (authoring) application.

In summary, to access, read and interpret user data created by 3rd party application, you have to analyze:

• Attribute ID used to identify the data. Be aware that some applications use several different records with different IDs, typically one with "own ID" (because IDs have been assigned 1 per company, not 1 per application) and others pointing e.g. to a database (with some default DB linkage ID).
• Used format, whether it's DB linkage, DMRS or User Data Linkage. The differences are described in the linked articles.
• Where the data are attached (to what element). Some applications attach custom data to cell header, some others to e.g. line representing pipe centerline, other combine different approaches.
• The data internal structure. This part is the most complex, because usually the data structure is not described anywhere. But for PDS, I assume you will be able to find at least some hints how to interpret the data. But at the end, it's about to process raw binary and VBA is not very good tool to do that, but it can be done.

With regards,

  Jan