Tools, Toolboxes, and Tasks (excerpt from MicroStation.chm)
MicroStation allows you to create custom tools and toolboxes. Custom tools can be copies of standard tools or tools from DGN libraries, modified to fit your needs, or they can be created by clicking the New Tool icon in the Customize dialog. Your custom tools can be set up to help you draw elements, adjust settings, run other applications, link to Web sites, and more.
Custom tools are placed in custom toolboxes, which are used to organize tools. Custom toolboxes can be copies of standard toolboxes or toolboxes from DGN libraries, modified to fit your needs, or they can be created by clicking the New Toolbox icon. You can place custom toolboxes within other toolboxes. Custom toolboxes can be opened and used in your workspace and/or grouped into tasks.
You create and manage custom tools and toolboxes on the Tools tab in the Customize dialog (Workspace > Customize).
Using tasks and workflows
A task is a collection of referenced tools grouped to facilitate a particular job. A sequence of tasks can be grouped into a workflow. By defining and grouping tasks into workflows, you can create a task-based user interface. (…)
MicroStation has dozens of drawing tools (or tools, for short). These tools are grouped for convenient selection in toolboxes and are referenced in tasks.
Tools referenced in a single task are used to perform a particular task, functionally speaking. For example, the Drawing Composition task references tools used to compose drawings. Only one task is active at any given time. The tools in the active task are grouped in a special dialog — the Tasks dialog.
When you are creating custom tools and toolboxes, you do not do this directly in tasks. Instead, you create them separately and reference them into one or more tasks. (You also should not create the same tool in multiple toolboxes. Instead, you should create one copy of a tool and place it in one toolbox.) This is because tasks can use overlapping sets of tools and toolboxes. For example, you can create one custom drawing tool and include it in two tasks.
If you need to modify the tool you do so once, and both tasks are automatically updated to reflect the modifications.
An analogy is that toolboxes are like the drawers in a tool chest.(Schubladen in einem Werkzeugkasten) You have one drawer for screwdrivers, one drawer for pliers, one drawer for wrenches, and one drawer for hammers. Your first task is “work on the lawn mower.” Your second task is “hang a picture.” In each task you have already defined which tools are needed from each drawer. You might need the hammer for both tasks. Whenever you are ready to perform one of the tasks, your task is automatically populated with the proper tools from each drawer. You do not have to open every drawer to find the tools you need, nor do you have to roll out the entire tool chest to perform your task.
Named Expressions
You can customize your tasks, workflows and right-click context menus using Named Expressions. When customizing tasks or right-click context menus (Workspace > Customize > Context Menus tab), you can show or hide and enable or disable them based on tests created in the Named Expressions dialog. For example, you can create a tool that will be visible only when you are working in sisNET by setting the tool’s Show/Hide Test property to “IsSisnetLoaded.”
You can define named expressions to retrieve values from application data structures and properties of application data, such as files, models, and elements. Within a named expression, arithmetical operations and comparison and conditional tests can be applied to retrieved values.
When a named expression is evaluated by the product's evaluator, the result is a string, numeric, or Boolean value.
The potential exists to use named expressions in many different ways.
In this edition you can use named expressions with the Customize utility to
Named expressions are stored in DGN libraries. If a DGNLib contains named expressions it must be stored in the location indicated by the MS_DGNLIBLIST configuration variable.
Named expressions are defined in the Named Expressions dialog (Utilities > Named Expressions).