Younger readers can Google Letratone, the rest of you may remember fiddly scalpel work and just how hard it was to pattern a drawing!

Here is a link to a cell library containing percentage dot screens that could be useful for giving a different 'old school…

Here are a couple of golden oldies. While AccuDraw has the RE shortcut to temporarily rotate the compass to an element, in some cases you might want to set the Active angle to a specific angle from an element, perhaps on a on a survey drawing or other…

Drawing Scale is a tool box I have permanently docked.

In any MicroStation based application press Ctrl + T to open the Toolboxes dialog.

To open Drawing Scale scroll down and tick the box, click OK:

I turn off Sub Unit and ACS Scale as I rarely use…

Originally published 4 Feb 2015

We have had a few questions about rounding dimensions to the nearest 5mm. This is not currently available via the Dimension Styles dialog but there are now methods available for both CONNECT Edition and V8i.

CONNECT Edition…

If you look at the delivered button assignments, Workspace menu > Button Assignments, the key-in for Alt + Data is 'match attributes fromcursor', this only matches the basic attributes:

Color; Level; Priority; Style; Transparency; Weight; Symbology…

Here are a few points on using the CONNECTION Client. As this utility is updated more frequently than our primary desktop products always go to the CONNECTION Client wiki for the latest and more extensive information.

Right-click on the Tray Icon in your…

We often need to place notes involving special characters, areas, volumes, angles, etc.

Any special character present in the fonts available to MicroStation and applications based on it can be access via the Text Editor dialog.

Take the example of  'm…

We frequently suggest that people watch the command prompts in the status bar when learning new MicroStation based applications or techniques:

You can see these prompts at your cursor during any graphic operation by adding the following configuration…

When you create custom tool buttons to add to the Ribbon or Quick Access Toolbar existing icons from the application may be appropriate or you may wish to create your own. Sometimes there may be an existing icon whose pattern is appropriate to follow…

Like most Ribbon UI applications the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) can be customized, before stating to explore this consider where any customizations will be stored. The default is in personal.dgnlib and will only be available to the person who adds the…

This piece covers a couple of techniques for working with brick dimensions.

The first method relies upon the ability of the wall tool in AECOsim Building Designer (ABD) to place walls by offset, the second uses MicroStation's units settings file to add…

Focus is where input from the keyboard will take effect.

Unlike an application such as Microsoft Word, where the input focus is essentially either in the document or in a dialog; MicroStation has several points where keyboard input can be applied.

While…

I recently updated an informal V8i training document written during my pre-Bentley consultancy days to CONNECT Edition.

The object of these documents is to highlight some of the fundamental operational features of MicroStation and related applications…

We have some heat map display styles available for certain attributes through Thematic Mapping. These apply to the situations they were designed for.

There are a host of other situations where heat map style symbology can be useful. James Manfield of…