What's an XIN file?

The XIN file is an XML file that contains (most/all of) the settings - graphical and computational that InRoads uses. InRoads Survey may use some settings and not others within the file. Each sub-application within the InRoads family will use some settings within the XIN file. Many of these tools have additional support files - Survey has TIW and TEW files (text import/export wizard), Storm and Sanitary have a couple of support files and the road design tools have a number of extra files.

ORD generally moves the majority of these settings to DGNLIB files, but does provide some tools that allow bulk editing using Excel and XML files that these tools can exchange with Open Roads. There is even one that reads an XIN file into Excel but it does not read all of the settings from an XIN. Even with these "Migration Tools" (available from the Open Roads Wiki Pages) there is still a lot of manual work developing an Open Roads Workspace. In practice, many of the agencies that used InRoads failed to fully utilize the capabilities of InRoads which also meant that their XIN files were incomplete.

Brief History: XIN files replaced INI and FWF files which replaced binary preference files. The XIN was a blessing as the earlier files needed to be kept synchronized and if someone opened two unrelated files, it could screw up both files. At least in the XIN, when you load one file, it carries all related settings.

In ORD, some settings are in element templates which can be shared with MicroStation. But the Feature Definitions and Feature Symbpologies are unique to the Open Roads/Bridge/Site family of products. But there is a very close alignment with Feature Definitions and XIN Features and similarly, Feature Symbologies are very closely aligned with XIN Named Symbologies. 

Thank you for this history, Chuck! As I mentioned, there isn't a lot of documentation if you want to use an xin file, let alone understand how it ticks.

"...failed to fully utilize the capabilities...which also meant that their XIN files were incomplete."

That's ours in a nutshell. As I mentioned it functions adequately for what it does, but not much else. When looking at the sample xin with the Migration Tools, I'm shocked to see how much "white space" is in our file when in the viewer for the xin files. When working with the "Fundamentals of ROW.." for SS2, And seeing all the choices from pulldowns in the examples, again I look at how little fleshed out ours is.

As I say, I think expanding, tweaking our xin file is maybe a good idea. If nothing else getting a better understanding of how it works which can't hurt for for the foreseeable future.

The question is where do I begin?

Get copies of a few examples DOT XIN and the Tri-Services AEC Workspace XIN. Some are better than others. They must be InRoads shops - GEOPAK Ss4 & Ss10 need an XIN for the Roadway Designer, but that is a very different and specilized version and not of much use for InRoads.

Then get a copy of Notepad++ with the XML tools Plug-in and add XIN and ITL to the extensions for XML Files. And learn to use its "folding code" tools. It does not hurt to also get XML Notepad.

Finally, since XIN files are XML, you can actually report on them using the XML Report tool. I actually created a whole family of XIN reports to assist in analyzing XIN files for rogue values. I am not connected to our VPN right now so I can't locate a sample, but I may have posted one or more in the newsgroups - but as to in what thread is anyone's guess.

If you are a PowerSurvey user only, you might find most XIN's setup pretty well for Survey.

And in the Survey Folder of the XML Reports, there are a few XIN reports: There are two "FeatureTableFromXINBy..." reports, a Level By Code report which list levels used by each Alpha Code, and a XINToSDR report that creates an ASCII list of Alpha Codes to load into an SDR collector. This can be modified to use on other collectors that support loading a list of predefined alpha codes.

You might also look in the XIN Folder for the few reports there. These do not limit themselves to Survey settings. All of the survey reports only report on Survey settings.

The XML Reports can be exported to Excel using the right click menu in the report (right) pane. When exporting to Excel, there is an options dialog box where you can try to preserve some of the HTML formatting. It must be used every time as it does not seem to support any custom default mode. You'll need to poke around to determine the best setting and even the best setting does not do a very good job with the header portion of the reports, but is better at formatting the body. 

Mark, if you can send me a message, I have a few DOT XINs on hand. I can't speak to how good they are, but they are what the client provides. You can often find most DOT workspace files online - they often have a CAD dashboard or download page so that consultants can get the DOT standards for doing work. That's where I collected mine - we have offices in a few different states, so we have a collection of standards.

Caddcop has a lot of experience and some great advice.

If you want to look at different DOT configurations, here's a convenient set of links to all that I have found.

https://envisioncad.com/dot-openroads-designer-civil-3d-configuration-downloads/

If you want to look at different DOT configurations, here's a convenient set of links to all that I have found.

https://envisioncad.com/dot-openroads-designer-civil-3d-configuration-downloads/