How to quickly extract cells from a design file into a cell library

By Eiren K. Smith, Axiom’s Vice President for Technology – www.axiomint.com

MicroStation departments sometimes receive design files from external sources containing cells which do not exist in their cell libraries. Until now, getting these cells out of design files and into cell libraries has been a manual, painstaking process. For years, MicroStation users have been clamoring for a means to extract every cell from a design file and place them in a cell library automatically and without duplicates. When I was Axiom’s Director of Technical Support, I talked to many customers who needed to be able to do this.

CellManager’s “Extract feature” solves the above problem for you automatically. The following steps demonstrate how simple it is to do this with CellManager

From the main CellManager dialog box, click on <Extract…>.
When the “Extract” dialog box comes up, you simply tell CellManager which design file contains the cells you want extracted by clicking on the <Select> button next to the “Source Design File” field. You then select the name of a cell seed file and the name of the new cell library you’d like to create by clicking on the <Select> button next to their respective fields. After you’ve filled in the fields, press <Extract>.

CellManager will do the rest automatically. CellManager will only extract one copy of each cell that has the same name. CellManager gives every extracted cell a description of “IMPORTED CELL”. Remember: cells in design files do not contain descriptions; MicroStation automatically removes descriptions from library cells when they are placed in design files.
Click on <OK> when the “Process complete” dialog box comes up.