Converting UCM Macros to Basic

Unknown said:

It is good to take a step back and see what your UCM code is doing.  Then translate the concepts to VBA.

Excellent suggestion!

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I'll second Robert's suggestion. I've converted over 300 UCM's to VBA's for different clients. That is the exact approach I took, replace the functionality but redesign from scratch. You are needlessly making the job much more difficult if you are examining every line of UCM code to translate to VBA.

Unknown said:

It is good to take a step back and see what your UCM code is doing.  Then translate the concepts to VBA.

Excellent suggestion!

Hi Elaine,

Another suggestion...  UCM is a programming language with a bunch of very simple tools that can't do much.  I was helping someone convert some UCMs to VBA.  First, he had tried to do automated conversions to BASIC, which produced unreadable, terrible code which was a major pain to work with.  Another thing I saw was these huge drawn out processes to do something very simple.  In UCM, to get the square root of "A" squared plus "B" squared, it was a 4 or 5 step process, rather than one line of code.  Also, point manipulation was done on X, then Y, then Z.  In VBA, that could be one command, and it definitely should be one Point3d variable rather than three un-named variables.

What I'm trying to say is that it is good to take a step back and see what your UCM code is doing.  Then translate the concepts to VBA--not just a direct word-for-word conversion.

--Robert

Unknown said:

I don't need to be concerned about working units and UORs in converting CVT?

VBA provides the Point3d and Point2d data types for working with coordinates.  Normally, you work in Master Units, and don't need to be concerned about UORs.  Because UCMs used UORs you often had to convert between the two.  You can assign a Point3d the like this...

Dim point As Point3d
point.X = 1.
point.Y = 2.
point.Z = 3.

Or, you might prefer the API, which offers useful methods like this...

Dim point As Point3d
point = Point3dFromXYZ (1., 2., 3.)

MicroStation VBA's default transform works in master unit values and UORs conversions should be minimized except where absolutely required by a method.

The MicroStation objects (Attachement and ModelReference) provide the following convenience functions:

• UORsPerMasterUnit
• UORsPerSubUnit
• UORsPerStorageUnit

Here is a sample showing how to take those numeric values and display them as strings, note that you can use Microsoft VBA's CStr() function to convert a number to a string value if you need to store the result:

Sub ActiveModelDisplayWorkingUnits()
    Debug.Print "UORsPerMasterUnit: " & ActiveModelReference.UORsPerMasterUnit
    Debug.Print "UORsPerSubUnit: " & ActiveModelReference.UORsPerSubUnit
    Debug.Print "UORsPerStorageUnit: " & ActiveModelReference.UORsPerStorageUnit
End Sub

Lastly as many have mentioned already, MicroStation BASIC, MicroStation User Commands (UCMs), and MicroCSL have all been deprecated prior to the MicroStation 8.1 version release and documented in some of the following references:

• MicroStation V8.1 Readme - MicroStation BASIC - Circa 2003
• MicroStation V8.1. Readme – User Commands (UCMs) - Circa 2003
• MDL Or MicroStation BASIC Choosing The Right Tool [TN]

HTH,
Bob

Unknown said:

I highly recommend that you convert things to VBA over Basic.  I have never tried this so I do not know how successful it will be, start the VBA recorder and then run the UCM it should record the playback of the UCM depending on how complex, it may help you get what you need.

I just want to mention again that I highly recommend that any new end user customization be done in VBA.  I would hate to see you have to do the work twice if you choose to convert things to Basic.

In "UCM-to-Basic.pdf" it says that CVT converts between working units and UORs and stores the result in var1. If var1 is a character string, the conversion is from UORs (Units of Resolution) to working units and then I would need to find the equivalent in VBA.

However, in VBA I did do something similar to what you showed in your reply, except made them const. So I don't need to be concerned about working units and UORs in converting CVT?

Unknown said:

CVT A0 = '.25'

Is there something different about the MIcroStation V8i version compared to the older version so that I don't need to translate CVT to the VBA counterpart?

There's a lot different.  CVT is a conversion instruction: the quoted string is converted to a decimal and stored in register A0.

VBA has more explicit assignments:

Dim decimalNumber As Double
decimalNumber = 1.234

The TCB registers Ax are globally-available storage slots.  Those UCM slots don't know or care what's stored in them: an integer number, floating point number, or a 3D point.  A VBA variable is local to your macro, and is usally declared to store a certain type of data. That makes VBA much safer to use.

Thank you, caddcop. I've been using "Microstation-UCM-REF15.pdf" and "UCM-to-Basic.pdf" to understand the UCM code, but I don't have the "MicroStation Productivity book." What I'm not clear about is CVT:

CVT A0 = '.25'

CVT A1 = '.625'

CVT A2 = '.5'

CVT A3 = '.125'

When I used the counterpart of this using Basic, the graphic didn't work correctly. But when I ignored it, it did. I converted the UCM code to VBA ignoring CVT and it also works.

Is there something different about the MIcrostation 8vi version compared to the older version the illustrators are using, Microstation SE O5.07.01.22, so that I don't need to translate CVT to the VBA counterpart?

I recently found my copy of the MicroStation Productivity book. It lists many of the register and/or tcb variables that UCM's used. If you need any explanation of some of these to determine what the code was doing, I can help.