scaling or replacing SS4 Lines and line strings in ORD

There can be a number of factors at play.

Does your SS4 drawing and your ORD drawing have the same Working unit definitions? That can cause issues with scaling.
Are these regular cells or annotative cells?
Is your annotation scale the same in each drawing, and are the annotation scales defined the same way?
Is your Model Global Linestyle Scale set to match your annotation scale, or is it set to a separate factor?

You can look at the Help file to find where most of these settings are.
If you can find and compare those settings between your SS4 drawing and your ORD drawing, we can probably help you figure out where the scaling factors are playing from.

Hi MaryB.  Both drawings have the same working units.  They are all annotative cells.  It appears the state has changed the size of the raw cells in the library which caused the need to replace all the cells manually.  I think the cells are repaired.  I'm not sure where any global annotation scale is set?  My drawing scale I have set to 1"=40'.  Each cell is inserted (replaced) at a scale of 1, such that the drawing scale controls the size.  The lines and line strings however are a mixed bag of sizes.  If I draw a line, it is a much different size than what came from SS4, yet if I examine the properties of each, they are the same (except the coordinates and length).  I have searched the help for combinations of Global Linestyle scale and find nothing.  I knew how to access a model properties in SS4, but cannot find this in ORD?  Is there a global annotation scale somewhere also?  Not in the help either.

I'm just clicking File - Help - Help Contents.  Not sure where else to search.  Bentley Support typically ignores my requests for support or they can't address the question, thus this forum seems to be the last resort.

If you are working locally, outside of the ProjectWise environment, then you aren't using that environment, nor any of the resources defined by it. And if you don't have an identical environment set up on your local computer, then you won't be using the same files and things may not be defined correctly. One of the main selling points of ProjectWise IS the managed environment, so that users don't have to worry about resources - they just come through as defined.

May I ask why you are using ProjectWise if you do everything locally?

I mean, there are definitely reasons to work on things locally - I've done it when dealing with slow connections. To do that sucessfully, you probably need the same workspace setup locally. You can load local files even if you are in the ProjectWise environment. I'm working with a client on their ProjectWise network, but I still can use my local/network cell libraries when I need them.

If you open the files from ProhjectWise explorer, do you see the same problems?

I'm using projectwise because it supposedly loads all the resource files.

Then our engineers can access my files to do design.

I spoke with one engineer who referenced my Topo and R/W drawings.  The Topo is split into 2 drawings as they are large.  We see that most of the linestyles do in fact look good in his drawing which i don't understand.  The fenceline however is huge in one drawing and looks good in the other (you can see it at the join between the 2 files.  I've checked both drawings and the same scale is applied in both, the same linestyle set for the same levels.  The linestyle scale is set to 1.0 in both.  I've tried setting all linestyles to "0" then compressing unused linestyles, then importing the linestyle DGNLIB again.  The size doesn't want to change.

The lines in my original Topo files do not appear correct, the fenceline is tiny in both.  Yet, when referenced into the exact same scale drawing 1"=40'  they appear, and one of the files is actually looking correct.  I don't understand this.  They should appear the same if the scales are the same in both drawings.  Here is what I see.  

Oh and my R/W drawing, still has only CUSTOM 1:40 as the only available scale.  I purged the workspace, then it reloaded when I opened the drawing.  Still no way to change the units.  I used the same 3D seed file for the Topo.  I have no idea what happened to the standard scale pull down.

You said you are working on your files locally. If that is the case, you are not in the ProjectWise environment.

Have you tried working on your files straight through ProjectWise? As in, open ProjectWise Explorer, and open the file straight from there? Does that make any difference? If things look fine for the engineer but not for you, that could be the difference, and we may be chasing our tails trying to fix something that actually works in the right environment.

There are one or two more factors that can affect linestyle scales when referenced into another drawing, and those may be set differently between the drawing that looks good and the drawing that doesn't as attachments.

Drawing A (the one that looks bad when referenced), Drawing B (the one that looks fine when referenced) and Container (the files both are referenced to).

In the Container, open your reference dialog, highlight Drawing A and look at attachment settings (or properties - I'm not in ORD today). One of the settings is "Global Linestyle Scale". This can be set to Reference, Master or Reference*Master. What is the settting.
Now look at the attachment settings for Drawing B for "Global Linestyle Scale". Are they the same, or are they different?

There is also a setting in the buttons along the bottom for "Scale Linestyles". Is that the same for both drawing attachments?

i am using Projectwise and have been all along, except when i created all the feature definitions, symbologies and templates for importing my survey codes.

All the settings are exact for both reference files and the main drawing... all set to "Master".

You can see by the image that several of the linestyles are correct from one file to the next, I'm now only having trouble with fenclines, guardrails, and the R/W line from the R/W drawing.

In order to repair the R/W drawing, i was thinking of opening the Seed file and copying everything from the R/W drawing into the seed, then saving this to a new name.  I hope my ORD alignment and the labels will copy?

I still can't figure out why the Topo looks different when referenced, when the Master is the same sacle?

Thanks for all your help.  

You should be able to reference your R/W drawing into a "clean" drawing and Merge Into Master.
But I cannot say that your ORD geometry will be retained as design information. I just haven't done that often enough to know.

Are your linestyles ByLevel, or are they applied to each element?
Can you show a screen shot of the properties (including linestyle scale) from one "bad" line in Drawing A, and the same information from a corresponding line in Drawing B?

You should be able to reference your R/W drawing into a "clean" drawing and Merge Into Master.
But I cannot say that your ORD geometry will be retained as design information. I just haven't done that often enough to know.

Are your linestyles ByLevel, or are they applied to each element?
Can you show a screen shot of the properties (including linestyle scale) from one "bad" line in Drawing A, and the same information from a corresponding line in Drawing B?

I was able repair the R/W drawing by "copying" everything into the Seed File.

Yes, I had to export the Alignment out of the bad file, then import it to the repaired file.

Very strange as I created the R/W drawing from the Seed file.  Anyway the scale change to 1"=40' repaired the R/W line style.

Now back to my Fenceline problem.  Both files show the linestyle properties to be the same.  I have the same problem with Gaurdrail.  i guess I'll try to change that style to "0", compress out the linestyle, then purge the workspace, then attach the style again and see if it changes.  I think it's somehow still hanging on to the SS4 linestyle from the photogrammetrist.  These are their lines.

I know I've already done this, but it's all I can do.

I'm attaching th screen captures of the fence line from the 2 different drawings.  Nothing to learn here. They are the same.

Well, it does answer some questions. It may not point to a solution, but it tells me part of what ISN'T the problem.

This confirms that the linestyle is indeed applied ByLevel, and not per element. I've chased all sort of scaling issues before where someone drew an element on the correct level, but set the linestyle when they drew the element. They set it to the same linestyle AS the level, but the level no longer controlled that independent line. Trying to figure out why some lines responded to the ByLevel controls, but not "that one" had me going in circles. I wanted to make sure that we didn't accidentally have that situation.

I'm glad you were able to fix your R/W drawing. No idea what that was...

Strange question...if you try that same reference Merge into good clean file with bad drawing "A", does that solve the scaling problem?

I managed to finally get the Fenceline to convert using the process of compressing, deleting the workspace, etc.  The Gaurdrail would not convert, so I tried copying the entire file from the reference into the Seed file and it magically worked.

I think that is the process I should have tried right from the start.

For some reason the drawing was hanging on to these old linestyles.

The 2 Topo drawings look wrong on their own (linestyles are tiny even at the 1"=40' scale, but somehow when referenced into a drawing of the exact same scale they look good.

So for now I think I'm good.  

I still have a lot of questions about a lot of things, but I'll try to figure them out on my own unless I get really stuck again.

I now need to figure out how to write my point "Decorations" to graphics through the multitudes of steps and things I have to create.

Thanks for your help and patience.

Andrew

I'm glad you were able to get everything up and going.
You're right - maybe next time just start by merging your "bad" drawings into a "good" blank file.  There's nothing wrong with fixing things if they can be fixed (and sometimes they can). But sometimes they just can't, and I'm glad you have a workaround now.

I know I have seen posts here before about writing in the survey points, so hopefully a search will find you a good direction.

Did you ever check the model properties for Line Style Scale. There are two settings possible and one known issue is that all reference files should share the same setting. Having some set one way and others set the other is a recipe for never ending line style scale issues. And generally, the active file setting gets applied to all reference files, so even if all reference files are set to match each other, a different setting in the master file will cause issues.