Ever have one of those drawings that contain lots of graphics and when you click “Update” it seems to take forever? The only reason you are updating the view is because you just deleted this big ’ole heavy weight line that left all those gaps in the view. Granted, the update probably only takes a few seconds but it still seems like an eternity when the boss is breathing down your neck. Your solution is the incremental update command <iupdate>.

In the “Key-in” browser type <iupdate>, then click on a data point in the related view. This will only update the active elements that need to be updated and will not update reference files. To update the reference file you must use the regular “Update” command.

There are several options available with this command. Using the “Key-in” browser you will see that you can also use <iupdate 1>, <iupdate view>, etc. Now you can really get fancy and set this up as a function key or in a custom tool box.

Let’s say that you want to set up a function key that allows you set up an active design file’s settings and view display for a customer submittal and because you have a lot of drawings to get ready you will need to do this many times.

Because the quantity of settings you want to ensure is large, the key-ins required will take far more than 56 characters, so you can’t do the whole thing with one function key.

The solution for this is really simple. Create a text file that contains all the key-in commands that you want to run in the appropriate order, one command to a line. Save this text file with an appropriate name in a directory that is not too deep in the directory structure. Make sure that you do not use spaces in the file name or place it in a directory path that has a space in it.

Now all you need to do to run this script from the MicroStation key-in browser or from a function key is to call it using the “@” character and the full path of the text file. Here’s an example of what you would type if the path to your script file was “c:\scripts\project35\setdgn.txt”:

@c:\scripts\project35\setdgn.txt

Make sure there are no spaces used anywhere in the string and also make sure that the full string does not exceed the maximum characters allowed in the dialog box.

Click here to download a PDF version of this list.

View manipulation
OF= Turn off levels by number
ON= Turn on levels by number
RV= Rotate view(s) about center
WO= Set view origin
SV= Save view
VI= Attach saved view
DV= Delete saved view

Text and dimensioning
FT= Active font
DF= Opens font dialog box
TH= Active height
TW= Active width
TX= Active height and width
LL= Active line length
LS= Active line spacing
TB= Tab spacing for importing text
TI= Tag Increment amount
LD= Dimension level
TV= Upper and lower dimension tolerance limits

Settings
AA= Active angle
AS= Active scale
XS= Active x scale
YS= Active y scale
ZS= Active z scale
GU= Master/Grid
GR= Reference grid
KY= (Snap) Divisor
UR= (Unit Lock) Distance

Set element and pattern attributes
AP= Active pattern cell
LV= Active level
CO= Active color
PA= Active pattern angle
LC= Active line style
PD= Active pattern spacing
WT= Active line weight
PS= Active pattern scale

Precision input
XY= <x,y,z> from origin along design files axes
DI= <distance, direction> from last data or tentative point relative to view axes
DL= <Dx, Dy, Dz> from last data or tentative point in design coordinates
DX= <Dx, Dy, Dz> from last data or tentative point in view coordinates
AX= Distance from Auxiliary Coordinate System (ACS) origin
AD= Distance from last data or tentative point in ACS coordinates

Cells
AC= Set active cell and select place active cell tool with relative off
AR= Set active cell and select place active cell tool with relative on
CM= Place active cell matrix tool
PT= Active point
LT= Active terminator
TS= Terminator scale
CR= Edit cell information
CD= Delete cell from cell library
CC= Create cell

3D modeling
DP= Set the display depth from 0.0 of view’s z-axis
DD= Distance to move display depth from current values
AZ= Set the active depth from 0.0 of the view’s z-axis
DZ= Distance to move active depth from current value
SX= Save ACS
RX= Attach ACS
PX= Delete ACS

File management
RD= Open design file
XD= Open design file with active design’s view configuration
RC= Attach cell library
RF= Attach reference file
DR= Displays contents of a text file
CT= Attach color table
AM= Attach and activate menu
AT= Activate tutorial

Database
AE= Define active entity
DA= Displayable attribute type
DB= Attach control file
DS= Specify fence filter
FI= Set database row as active entity
RA= Set attribute review selection criteria
RS= Name report table

Digitizing
SD= Active stream delta
ST= Active stream tolerance

User command
UC= Activate user command
UCC= Compile user command
UCI= User command index
OX= Retrieve user command index

Other
EL= Create element list file
FF= Copy fence contents to new design file
GO= Global origin
SF= Move fence contents to new design file

Now go into the master file you want to attach the view to. Open the “Reference Files” dialog box in MicroStation. When the “Attach Reference File” dialog box comes up, select the “Saved Views” name you gave it.

Then, place the attachment where you want it. This works great when you only want to reference a certain area of a design file and nothing else.

Thanks again, Larry!

The SET RANGE command displays the range data that’s stored in the element (V7 or V8). This key-in command can be used to diagnose why you can’t snap to or select an element or why an element is excluded from fence operations.

Below is an example where the range for a shared cell is wrong (taken from an actual Axiom customer file):

The bold red rectangle identifies the incorrect range rectangle for the “S” shaped element. This range error throws off the range for the whole shared cell.

The SET RANGE command graphically illustrates that the stored range is incorrect, as illustrated above. As a strange side effect of this range error, other elements near this shared cell were un-selectable. To remedy this, you could redraw the shared cell definition — or you can automatically handle this and any other corruption in the MicroStation file using FileFixer.

The SET RANGE command is also useful when examining elements with Axiom’s Problem Element Viewer — the utility that let’s you graphically view the problem elements found by FileFixer or EdG.