Executing Long Sets of Key-in Strings

Many dialog boxes in MicroStation have limitations to the length of strings that can be entered into them. For example the “Function Keys” dialog when creating or editing a function key value has a 56 character limitation.

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.