OpenRoads Designer
When creating sheets from named boundaries the software automatically creates a drawing model then a sheet model from the named boundary. This workflow seems to work well and is pretty straight forward. The problem I have ran into is the fact the drawing model references are rotated and sometimes moved. So the world coordinates in the drawing model don't match the design model. If I where to identify a coordinate value or bearing without using the "OpenRoads label tools" they would be incorrect. Where do we label or annotate world coordinates and bearings? I would prefer to do it in the drawing model. Is there a setting or workflow to keep the drawing model references scale 1:1 , xy=0,0 and rotation 0 degrees?
Jpin, Thanks for the input. The problem we are finding is that you can't annotate an unrotated drawing model with labels. The labels don't rotate to match the view rotation. Not sure I understand the workaround you mentioned in your post. May need to explain in more detail.
Bentley's workflow for creating sheets from drawing models has been around awhile, I set it up in SS2 and SS4. The only thing new is the use of named boundaries instead of saved views. Creating a drawing model from a named boundary or saved view makes sense. You can isolate the view, clip the references and annotate the individual drawings that can be combined to make a sheet. This is how the Uniform Drawing System (UDS) is set up in National CAD Standards documentation. This is great to see. The problem I am finding with the drawing model workflow is the fact that the software creates a drawing model from a named boundary then rotates the reference files instead of the view for annotation. That may be ok for architectural drawings were coordinates don't really matter, but for civil drawings coordinates are everything. A mislabeled coordinate on a project can cost an engineer or DOT thousands of dollars.
I don't see Bentley changing this soon. I would guess the workflow for creating sheets from named boundaries (saved views) is difficult to change and effects many different products. I believe Bentley is trying to standardize how sheet creation is accomplished in Microstation and this is a good thing. Out of all the DOT's in the US that use Microstation, I would bet almost every one has a different method for creating sheets. As users we just want something standard and simple to understand like Autocad's paperspace and modelspace.
I think our best bet would be to push for "Labels" to have the ability to rotate with the active view as dimensions and text do. This at least would allow users to annotate coordinates, bearings etc... in a design model at the true location.
jpln,
I was trying to reproduce the workflow you describe in your post. Do you use the named boundary dialog to produce sheets? Do you create sheets references from the design model or the drawing model? Are you annotating data in the drawing model or design model?
As you can tell this rotated drawing model issue is really bugging me :-)
It doesn’t matter what view, model, drawing, design. One cannot place the text with this tool and make the angle of the text different than 0 or 360. In GeoPak labeler you can place labels text and different angles than o or 360.
Garry
Yeah, InRoads notes was the same way. The notes would match the view rotation. What is Bentley doing?