MicroStation Tips » Keyboard Tips

Using “/” to Divide Values

MicroStation User — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:10:49 +0000

By Rodolf Lumampao, Worley Astron, Karratha, Australia

You can use the “/” to divide anything in a MicroStatin input field.

Say you have 500mm of text height and you want to change it to 250mm. Just add “/2″ or “500/2″.

You can divide anything by adding “/”.

And it is V7 and V8 compatible.

Quick Element Selection — for V7 and V8

MicroStation User — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:09:35 +0000

You probably know that if you drag the element selection tool, you can select any element that is completely inside the selection area (shown as a dashed line below).

But, what you may not know is that by holding down the key while dragging the selection pointer, you can select the elements inside the selection area and elements that merely cross it. This is very helpful for quickly selecting elements whose endpoints intersect an element that you do not want included in the selection set (in this example, this element is the green box shown below).

By holding down and while dragging the element selection tool over the elements you want to select, you can quickly include elements that are completely inside the selection area and elements that merely overlap the selection area. It beats clicking on each element!

MicroStation V8 XM keyboard shortcuts

MicroStation User — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:08:06 +0000

This month, we will go over how to speed up your V8 design work using keyboard shortcuts.

You will notice that the toolbar icons have characters below them. These are the shortcut keys associated with each tool set.

Each tool icon has a shortcut key associated with it.

To take advantage of these shortcuts, you must first enable Position Mapping (Workspace | Preferences).

Preferences dialog (under Workspace menu)

When Position Mapping is enabled, you can press the shortcut key to bring up the menu associated with that character.

By pressing the shortcut key, in this case, you can load the associated toolbar menu. After loading the menu, you can press the number key associated
with the tool to load that tool.

In addition, if you want to load the tool that is already showing in the toolbar (like the Place SmartLine tool in the example above), you can just press and the shortcut key and the tool is activated directly.

By pressing the shortcut key and , you can load the tool directly.

Edit Text — “Apply” from the Keyboard (V7 only)

MicroStation User — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:06:58 +0000

By Rick DeWitt
I frequently hear users complain that you have to manually click the “apply” button on the text editor dialog with the mouse to commit the proposed text changes to the design file. There are actually two fast and simple ways to accomplish the same thing from the keyboard.

After making the appropriate changes in the text editor you can apply it by using the “Ctrl + Enter” keys together.
You can also activate the “Apply” button using the hot key combination of “Alt + A”.