I am using OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition - 2020 Release 2 Update 8 - Version 10.08.01.33.
When using the Drawing Production tools to generate plan sheets, it seems that the nesting depth parameter of the resulting Drawing model and Sheet model are arbitrarily hard-coded to a value of 99. I would have expected that the nesting depth value should have been "passed through" from the DGNLIB that is being used to generate the sheets. Here are some screen grab images.
The left side image is from the DGNLIB and the right image is from the resulting plan drawing model.
The left side image is from the DGNLIB and the right image is from the resulting plan sheet model.
Can someone please confirm that no matter what value is used in the DGNLIB file that the resulting drawing model and sheet model will always have a value of 99? Is there something special about this value of 99 that is being used?
If the nesting depth value cannot be controlled in the DGNLIB file, then is there perhaps a Configuration Variable setting that dictates the value in the resulting drawing model and sheet model files?
So far, the only work-around I have been able to come up with is to create a VBA macro to post-process the cut sheet files to adjust the nesting depth values in the drawing model and sheet model to values of 1 and 2. This macro is pretty sluggish, but I might try to revise it to run in a background thread of MicroStation as opposed to having to open each DGN file and model.
99 is the maximum value possible with nested levels. While I cannot talk for the developers, they may have set it so high just to ensure that the 'maximum case scenario' is covered. Your DGNLIB will not have all the survey, mapping, utility files etc referenced in, so the nesting level number will not match the 'real world' number.
Why do you need to amend it post-production? Does it affect the file opening times or something?
Here is my understanding of nesting depth, which might be flawed. For discussion purposes, assume the following:
A - parent model (i.e., a model in a DGN file) - e.g., the sheet model in a cut sheet
B - a separate model or DGN file - e.g., the container file that has other base files referenced and attached to it
C - separate model or DGN file - e.g., a base file that contains the existing topography, or the existing utilities, etc.
D, E, F, G - separate models or DGN files - ancillary files
Next, consider that file C has models D thru G attached to it as "direct" references. What I mean by direct is that live nesting is turned off and is not being used in file C.
Next in file B we have attached file C and are using Live Nesting.
Next in file A we have attached file B and are using Live Nesting.
So the only way to see file C in file A is to have the value of live nesting set to 2 or higher. However, if we use a value of 3 or say 99, then MS will start to trickle down and "display" other base files that weren't intended to be attached. For example, in file A we now will likely be "seeing" files D thru G because they are attached directly to file C. This is behavior that I don't want, and to avoid this requires getting pretty specific for the value of the nesting depth.