This two-part blog series written by Dan Raker of MicroStation Connections website is reprinted here with their permission.

5 Transition Strategies for moving to MicroStation CONNECT Edition

Want to get up to speed quickly with CONNECT Edition?

Try some of these strategies to move things along.

By Dan Raker, ConnectPress

From using multiple version in parallel to pre-loading new productivity tools, there are a handful of ‘best practices’ to work through to get MicroStation CONNECT Edition rolling.

By talking to CONNECT Edition users and reading through the many available Bentley materials, I’ve collected five transition strategies here that stand out as best practices to help smooth and speed the transition.

Strategy #1: You don’t need to throw out the old while you bring in the new.  Run old and new versions side-by-side.

Among the many things we like about how Bentley does software is making sure that old and new versions of products, as well as underlying design files like DGNs, remain forward- and backward-compatible.

This means that as you get up-to-speed with CONNECT Edition you can continue running old MicroStation versions.

Similarly, if you have deliverable obligations for clients or long-running projects, you can use CONNECT Edition tools for their immediate productivity benefits and backward translate resulting files to meet those obligations.

There is no fidelity loss of data when going forward or backward between Bentley product versions.

All of the Bentley product suite has been released with at least initial CONNECT Edition releases.  During the first few years of CONNECT Edition, some organizations were hesitant to implement MicroStation CONNECT Edition believing they had to wait until other important playbook components they use (i.e. OpenRoads or AECOsim Building Designer) were also released in CONNECT Edition.

This misconception kept many from benefiting from early CONNECT Edition benefits and proved a false resistance for some. Even today this myth continues.  Remember, the underlying DGN format and its backward- and forward-compatibility render this issue moot.

Finally, remember that you can run different versions of MicroStation on your personal workstation—even instances of V8i and CONNECT Edition running at the same time.

Strategy #2: Eliminate the small stumbling blocks of migration

While there are a few things you are going to want to do to get the most benefit from CONNECT Edition, there are only two things you must do to get your enterprise started.  And even one of those is initially optional.

Bentley has made transitioning from a V8i environment to MicroStation CONNECT Edition almost completely seamless and automatic.  You can essentially boot up CONNECT Edition, point it at existing projects and files and get to work.

The lone exception to this immediate startup is ‘Configuration Reorganization.’   In the past most users or enterprises set up and customized workspaces to tailor the V8i experience for anything from preferences to standards to client requirements.

CONNECT Edition offers a vast array of additional configuration tools.  You will eventually tailor your CONNECT Edition the way you created and maintained workspaces in V8i.

However, because V8i workspaces are highly individualized, they don’t automatically transfer over to CONNECT Edition without a little help. Below you will find how workspaces, ‘Site Level,’ ‘Project,’ and ‘User’ have taken on new names in CONNECT Edition as ‘Configuration,’ ‘Organization Level,’ and ‘Workset, respectively.  The notion of a V8i or earlier ‘User’ has gone away in CONNECT Edition.

So, to get your team up-to-speed without frustration, I recommend that you take a few hours to convert workspaces to CONNECT Edition configurations.  Knowing this is the single ‘must-do’ conversion requirement, Bentley has pulled together a relatively painless Wizard to help with this conversion.

Most of the differences between V8i and CONNECT Edition are in name identification only.
You do need to convert V8i workspaces to CONNECT Edition configurations. 

There is a wizard to help with this conversion (stay tuned for even better news in CONNECT Edition Update 11!).

Look for the next chapter of this story in an upcoming blog post.

Our official blog is located at http://www.procureware.com/blog/.

On behalf of the BDN and Platform development teams I would like to announce some current work-in-progress (WIP) being performed to the Bentley Programming Communities to provide more useful/needed information, resources, and updates moving forward. Here are a few highlights some of you might have recently noticed and if not, no worries - let's explore some of the recent changes implemented:

1. Bentley Communities - Developers and Programming.  Consider this site to be the primary entry point for developers (today) to explore Bentley API and SDK resources available.  This page provides some (common) standard navigational links to help make getting to common resources quick and easy.
   
   
   1. Located at the Top, you will always know where you are.  In this case: Developers and Programmingsite - located under the Product Communities.
   2. Each Site may provide separate areas/features; like: Wiki (information), Forum (Search and Ask questions), Blog (helpful topics), Files (downloadable files)
   3. Community (nested) sub-site Programming Community icons. Sub-sites provide "product line" specific programming resources you expect from Bentley Communities; for:
       - MicroStation, Civil, Geospatial, ProjectWise, and Bentley Developer Network (BDN)
   4. Lastly, a handful of helpful links to explore/investigate additional Bentley Community and Programming resources outside the standard Bentley Community Programming sub-sites
      
      
      
      
      
2. Bentley Community Ideas - we want to hear your Ideas on the Programming and BDN communities related to specific items you would like to see in future product line SDK releases, or within the Programming communities.  Simply create/submit an idea using the "Ideas" icon (anywhere available) providing a brief and descriptive summary of the idea/feature (or workflow) you would like to see.  Ideas can be voted up/down by your community peers and can help us determine need and priority if used properly.  You can conveniently review the current Idea Status (possibly in the comments) indicating if an item is being considered by the product team as an enhancement, or when complete and available in a software release.
   
   
3. Bentley CONNECT Information and Resources (Users, Admins, Developers)
   
   
   1. Say Hello to MicroStation CONNECT 
   2. Migrating to CONNECT (Getting started with more to come...)
      
      
4. NEW: Civil Programming community. Start asking, watch (and help) it grow!
   
   
   1. Announcement:  New Civil Programming Forum for OpenRoads programming/SDK questions
      
      
5. Keeping current
   
   
   1. BDN (Blogs, Videos)
   2. MicroStation SDK (Announcements, Blogs)

Please note we have a lot of enhancements and endeavors in the works beyond these items mentioned. Keep tuned for more information and changes using the "Keeping current" links and watch or attend the upcoming Year in Infrastructure(YII) event for much more insight, news, and exciting opportunities for 2019 and beyond. We look forward to improving your experience and your feedback on progress being made and future needs.

Thank you,
Bob

We are pleased to announce the release of gINT Civil Tools CONNECT Edition version 10.02.00.20. This release contains many new features and enhancements. It is available for download from https://select.bentley.com/FulfillmentCenter/

The October Windows update (1809) has been found to have significant issues. Some Windows users have reported that large numbers of files and other documents have gone missing after the update is installed.

At this time Microsoft have redacted the update. If you have already downloaded it, it is advised that you do not install the update at this time.

If you have already installed the update and have seen files go missing, you should contact the Microsoft support line.

Is there a way to get cut patterns in forward and reflected views as with DEM?

If not, will this be available in Connect??

Upgrade strategies: MicroStation CONNECT Edition

5 Transition Strategies for moving to MicroStation CONNECT Edition (part 2 of 2)

Strategy #3: Get comfortable with and teach your users about Search

Two CONNECT Edition additions strongly empower your users to get up to speed with minimal hand-holding.

Start with Search.

Search is pervasive in MicroStation CONNECT Edition. You can search for help, files, content and more.

The new Windows/Office-style ribbon user interface keeps a search box front and center always (well upper left-hand corner, anyway). Using this ribbon search box invokes CONNECT Advisor (see strategy #4 below) for a host of support including Bentley LEARN Server content, materials from Bentley Communities and even YouTube videos to help you on your way.

         Search from the Ribbon.

The CONNECT Advisor dialog box pops up when you begin keying into the Advisor search. In this case typing ‘line’ revealsa list of Bentley LEARN items, Bentley Communities results and YouTube videos. You can customize prioritization and add personalized feeds.

And most dialog and other pop-up boxes include a context sensitive search box appropriate for the task at hand.

Search within dialog boxes.

Strategy #4: Get comfortable with and teach your users about CONNECT Advisor, especially “QuickStarts”

Need help? Click the ? button in the upper left-hand corner of the MicroStation ribbon and you jump to the CONNECT Advisor--which brings together resources from a whole host of places: Bentley LEARN Server, Bentley Communities, YouTube videos and more.

Right at the top of the CONNECT Advisor dialog box is a search line – enter a few keystrokes and the list below starts populating. In the example below, entering ‘line’ brings up all kinds of resources.

In addition to this list, most enterprises are loading searchable links to their personalized project or enterprise CONNECT Advisor resources, so users have, right within-MicroStation, the access they need to things like inter- and intra-net pages, RSS feeds and more.

You can even set up ‘frequently viewed’ lists and other ‘folders’ to keep track of tools you use frequently – or even tools you use infrequently so that you cut down on search links.

One of the great things about CONNECT Advisor is that it is constantly updating in real time. In the example above, training resources started populating for ‘line’ dated October 25 right in the middle of our October 25^th webinar. This was unrehearsed!

If you are not familiar with the huge number of resources available free from the Bentley LEARN Server, this would be a good time to get a feel for the self-training tools you can use.

The ribbon dialog box keeps track of things like ‘Most Recent,’ ‘Search Results,’ ‘QuickStarts’ and more. When you select QuickStarts you get a full array of 2-4-hour tutorials to get up-to-speed on concepts, best practices, and recommended workflows. The more you type in the search box, the more contextually sensitive results you will get.

Highlight QuickStarts to access tutorial information.

QuickStart tutorials are 2-4-hour mini tutorials.

Strategy #5: Get familiar with and prepopulate a few each: Data Types/Properties, Documentation and Display Rules/Reports, and Design Libraries

These three CONNECT Edition tools offer perhaps the most dynamic productivity improvements over similar V8i functions. They also have the greatest potential to entice new users and folks holding out from moving over the CONNECT Edition.

Data Types with their underlying database-driven properties open possibilities for smart designs, documentation and reports. Design libraries come alive when the properties underlying the graphics are intelligent.

The more your team uses Item Type properties, the more you can take advantage of CONNECT Edition Property Driven smart tools.

In the example above the tanks are storing more than liquids or gasses! They have size, pressure, thickness, location and much more. In fact, the ‘tank’ item in the design library can be a smart ‘parametrically-driven’ cell that creates and places itself using these underlying properties.

The more Data Type properties are built into a design file, the more you can do automatically based on these properties. In the example above the display, reporting, annotation and sheet layout have all been automatically created from the underlying data.

Using ‘smart’ property data also opens the possibilities for parametrically-driven design, automatic reporting, sheet creation and more.

I recommend that you pick one or two examples of design cells that are commonly used in your organization, set them up with Data Types and underlying properties, and use these in a few designs to demonstrate their power – first for yourself, and then for others you are trying to get on board with CONNECT Edition.

Do you have one or more strategies that have worked for you as you’ve implemented MicroStation CONNECT Edition evangelist in your organization? I want to hear from you and maybe share your story with others – danraker@connectpress.com.

Dan Raker has been writing about CAD and MicroStation software for over 35 years.

This article originally appeared in MicroStationConnections.com and is copyright ©2018 by ConnectPress, Ltd. Some of the material in this article originated in the live webinar “Why you should start using MicroStation CONNECT Edition” on October 25, 2017. You can watch the view on demand version of this webinar at http://microstationconnections.com/feature_full.php?cpfeatureid=118508. ConnectPress’ MicroStationConnections.com also runs a resource page for CONNECT Edition learning and migration at http://microstationconnections.com/spotlight.php?spotid=805.

Hello,

This is a reminder of our upcoming regularly scheduled patch and maintenance weekend - October 12 thru 14th for Bentley ProjectWise Managed Services.  We apologize for any disruption in service you may possibly see but the maintenance of your servers is pertinent for system health and security.

Microsoft releases its security patches on the second Tuesday of each month. Bentley Managed Services patches all hosted servers on the following weekend during non-business hours per the location of the hosted servers. Please view the Microsoft Security Updates site for the release notes for this month's patching. 

To see a schedule of all 2018 patch weekends, please see the Bentley patch calendar  located within the Bentley Communities ProjectWise Hosting Services web site.    

 During each patch weekend, Bentley strives to keep the planned outage to 30 minutes or less per server farm (FQDN).

This email is being sent to the ProjectWise hosted server contacts for your company. If you want to review the contacts Bentley has for your account, please let me know.

Thank you very much

LEAP Bridge Steel CONNECT Edition V18 U1 M1 contains following bug fixes:

• Defect regarding the reporting of flange lateral bending when grillage analysis is performed
• A file specific error when performing RSA analysis
• A minor issue in FEM mesh size settings control

For the detailed release notes, see the attached PDF file.

LEAP Bridge Steel CONNECT Edition V18 U1 M1 contains following bug fixes:

• Defect regarding the reporting of flange lateral bending when grillage analysis is performed
• A file specific error when performing RSA analysis
• A minor issue in FEM mesh size settings control

For the detailed release notes, see the attached PDF file.

This post will show how to create a flow for uploading an image document to ProjectWise Design Integration datasource.

The flow will be used to quickly create a document from an image using a mobile phone. Let’s say there is an engineer who does field visits, he needs to load many pictures efficiently and then inform other teams members about new uploads. Without flow this task would require several steps, such as choosing a destination folder, filling document attributes, sending an email about the upload. This flow demonstrates how to simplify this action to just a few clicks.

ProjectWise Setup

Let’s use sample project BSI400 from ProjectWise sample dataset. The BSI400 project must be associated with a cloud project and a connection was created. To learn how to do this go to Preparing ProjectWise for Flow.

There are three folders for images in the project. The flow will have a preset to add an image to each folder quickly.

We need to know the following information to be able to create documents in these folders:

• Name of preset
• Path to images folder
• List of people to notify

To make the flow more flexible let’s store this information as documents in ProjectWise . This way it can be modified at any time as needed. We have created a new environment ‘Flow Automation’ with two attributes for path and people. Name of preset will be document name.

Creating a Flow

Now let’s create a new flow. Each flow starts with a trigger. In our case it will be a mobile flow button trigger. To do this:

• Go to flow.microsoft.com
• Choose My flows
• Click Create from blank.
• Scroll down and click ‘Search hundreds of connectors and trigger’
• Choose Flow button for mobile

Pick the only available trigger ‘Manually trigger a flow’. Use ‘Add an input’ to create a text input with picklist containing preset names (the text here must match file name in automation folder exactly) and then add an image file input:

Reading preset information

Next, let’s find a preset document to retrieve destination path and list of people to notify stored there. Click +New Step, search for ProjectWise. This will show all actions available with ProjectWise:

Choose ‘Find a document by path or GUID’ action. This will add a ProjectWise action to the flow. All ProjectWise actions require a ProjectWise Cloud project and a Work Area Connection (the first two parameters).

The third parameter is a path to the document. Let’s construct it as a concatenation of a known path to a automation folder (‘./99_Automation/Flow Image Upload/’) and name of preset, taken from the mobile button trigger.

The last parameter tells Flow about the environment of the document, so it can return correct attributes. Attribute values will be used as inputs to other actions.

Creating a new document

The next step is to create a name for the new document and file. To keep it simple I will name it using a time stamp. Let’s use ‘Compose’ action from ‘Data Operations’ and a couple of functions for this.

Enter this expression to input of compose action: formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyyMMddHHmmss'). This function will generate a timestamp string suitable for file name looking like this: 20181009111942.

Now we have all the information needed to create a new document. Let’s do that! First find a ProjectWise action called ‘Create a new document’ and then pick project and connection. Then fill in the general document properties:

• Folder: take the Path attribute from the preset document attribute Path retrieved in previous step. (prefix it with ‘./’)
• Document name is an output of compose action
• File name is also an output of compose action plus an extension
• File content is Picture output from flow trigger

Notifying interested parties

Now once the document is created, let’s send an email notification. Let’s use Office 365 Outlook action ‘Send an email’.

• To: The recipients is a semicolon separated list of emails from the preset document attribute ‘PeopleToNotify’
• Document name was used in the subject.
• The email body will contain links to document in ProjectWise and in Share
• Do not forget to set parameter Is HTML to Yes

It is now time to save and run the flow!

Variations

This example suggests storing preset information in ProjectWise. For this we have created a new environment. In many cases creating of a new environment is not desired. Possible alternatives are: using any other already existing environment to store this information, reading present information from Excel spreadsheet stored in OneDrive or SharePoint.

Summary

This post demonstrated how to use ProjectWise Flow connector to create new documents and how to store additional information required for Flow to run in ProjectWise.

This document explains how to set up and interchange the working units in MOSES.

Two sets of files are used to demonstrate the unit definition and units interchange to assess the longitudinal strength of a barge. The two sets of files can be found on ...\hdesk\runs\samples\how_to directory.

MOSES v10.14 was used in generating results for this work.

Specify Analysis Units

The analysis units are specified with the &DIMEN command and they are usually defined at the top of the file. The command syntax is

&dimen -options

and the available options are

 -dimen, -save, or -remember

The three options will be discussed with two examples below. Let us see the first set.

Long_str.cif and Long_str.dat

The -dimen option controls the current analysis dimensions and in long_str.cif we see

&dimen -dimen meter k-nts

When a -dimen option is used, any input that follows is to be consistent with meters and kilonewtons and all output will also be consistent. With this option available one can define input data in a system different than meters and kilonewtons. This feature is used in the second set of files.

In long_str.cif and long_str.dat all input is consistent in meters and kilonewtons and no further discussion is made. The results from this set of files will be used for comparison with the output from the second set.

Long_str_mtons.cif and Long_str_mtons.dat

In these files the same analysis is carried out but this time metric tonnes force are used instead. The syntax in the command and the data file is specific to demonstrate how analysis units are changed, data is specified, and then return to the initial units.

Let us look at Figure 1 where the implemented units in the command file can be seen better.

• On top of the file, step A, we see
  &dimen -save -dimen meters k-nts
  This command defines the “computational” units and MOSES is informed that all data that follows is to be in meters and kilonewtons.
• In step B, the INMODEL command reads the information contained in the data file.
• In step C, the &DIMEN command is used again, this time to change the input units from meters and kilonewtons to meters and metric tonnes. Any subsequent input is to be in meters and metric tonnes until a new &DIMEN command is encountered. The -save option used here instructs MOSES to save the current dimensions so that when the -remember option is issued, the previous units saved, in step A, will be recalled.

• In step D, the &DIMEN command is used again, this time to alter the input units from meters and metric tonnes to meters and kilonewtons. Anything that follows is to be in meters and kilonewtons until a new &DIMEN command is encountered in step E.
• Finally, in step E the -remember option is invoked to revert to the initial units defined in step A.

Remember that MOSES stores all the data in neutral format. It is the user’s responsibility to ensure that the units are consistent in each step. MOSES will not convert input data in any of the above steps. The benefit of the above scheme is that one can input a model using different units for various definitions. For example, a barge may be defined in metric units, while a jacket in English units.

Post processing results from the above two analyses shows that the banding moment and shear curves are identical even though in long_str_mtons the flexural rigidity EI was converted from kN-m² to Te-m² in

&describe body barge -section 113e11/9.81 0 75.333

Note that the above change from kN-m² to Te-m² is not automatic but the user has to responsibly carry out conversion. The above interchange can take place as many times as necessary as long as one respects the units chosen with the -dimen option.

Do not forget to issue the -remember option last (step E) to revert to the primary analysis settings (step A).

While migrating from V8i or any of the previous versions to CONNECT Edition, CAD Admins will look for silently removing the old application so that the users are not bothered. The attached PowerShell script can be of great use for such uninstallations.

Using the Script

The general syntax for the script is:

Uninstall.ps1 -AppName 'ProductName'

Where, ProductName is name of the product name as seen in the Add/Remove Programs. For example, MicroStation CONNECT Edition

In case the product name has a parentheses ‘(‘ ‘)’, it should be prefixed with a backslash ‘\’. For example, MicroStation V8i (SELECTseries 4), should be written as MicroStation V8i \(SELECTseries 4\)

Note that when you uninstall MicroStation, only MicroStation will be uninstalled. Other post-install components such as DGN Index Service, DGN Thumbnail Provider etc., are not uninstalled. Those need to be uninstalled separately, or you can club multiple applications in one command, by separating each with a comma, like this:

Uninstall.ps1 -AppName ('MicroStation V8i \(SELECTseries 4\)','CONNECTION Client','Bentley DGN IFilter','Bentley DGN Thumbnail Provider','Bentley Dgn Index Service','HDR Preview','Bentley DGN Preview Handler')

Some post-install components such as AutoDesk RealDWG 2016, do not have UninstallString in the registry key. Hence, these will have to be uninstalled manually.

Additional Parameters

-LogDir

Allows you to specify the directory for log files. For example,

Uninstall.ps1 -AppName 'MicroStation V8i \(SELECTseries 4\)' -LogDir "C:\Temp\Logs\"

-Verbose

Provides verbose output of uninstall script. For example,

Uninstall.ps1 -AppName 'MicroStation CONNECT Edition' -Verbose

-Debug

To debug uninstall script (view uninstall commands called). For example,

Uninstall.ps1 -AppName 'MicroStation V8i \(SELECTseries 4\)' -Debug

MOSES CONNECT Edition 10.14 is now available

The MOSES product team is pleased to announce the availability of MOSES CONNECT Edition (Version 10.14.00.12) on the Fulfillment Center.

NOTE: This is an update and will overwrite earlier installations of MOSES 10.13, etc.

Version 10.14 of MOSES includes a Technology Preview of the new MOSES Executive. Installed alongside the classic versions of the MOSES applications, the Executive aims to replace and build on the functionality of the existing classic version of MOSES.

Some of the features of the MOSES Executive include:

• A unified editing, analysis and post processing interface
• A project view containing all files referenced in a given analysis
• An inbuilt editor with context sensitive highlighting, access to help for a given MOSES command (via the F1 key) and easy commenting of code sections
• Advanced data processing features including interactive graphs plotted from data produced whenever a REPORT command was issued
• Updated model viewing capabilities, including the ability to directly record *.avi files from a desired view point

As this version is a technology preview it is possible that users may find issues previously unknown to the MOSES product team. The team kindly requests that users provide feedback via the Bentley Support link located in the Support tab of the ribbon.

Full details are explained in the ReadMe.

As part of this update we have added several features which you can test to ensure the features are working properly prior to the commercial release of Navigator CONNECT Edition Update 6. Below is a list of the new capabilities, as well as the link to download the update.

Click on the link to download the Navigator CONNECT Edition Beta Update 6.

• Native file support for DWG, VUE, and RVM files: From the File Open screen in Navigator, you can now open DWG, VUE, and RVM files.
• Sheets: The File Open screen now has a Sheets tab where you can select any sheet model that is included in the i-model, and view that sheet in Navigator.
• Sharing Suppression Rules: From the Suppression Rules dialog box, you can now copy all the suppression rules that exist for a different clash job and quickly apply those suppression rules to the clash job that you are currently working with.
• Embedded files on the Index Page : The File Open screen now has a Documents tab where you can open any files that are embedded in the i-model, such as XLSX files, DOCX files, XML files, and more.

If you have any problems or you would like to send any feedback during your testing of Navigator CONNECT Edition Beta Update 6, you will find a feedback menu entry in the backstage menu. From the feedback menu entry you can send an email to the NavigatorBeta@bentley.com email address which has been created to capture feedback for this technology preview.

Please note that this technology preview of Navigator CONNECT Edition Update 6 is only available for Windows desktop.

In real-world, multiple Bentley applications are used in tandem on a single project. Multiple domain-specific products built on top of MicroStation platform are used together. For example, in a large infrastructure project, AECOsim Building Designer (aka ABD) is used to design buildings, OpenRoads Designer (aka ORD) is used to model bridges and roads, and Bentley Map for geographical mapping. The project has separate design files for each application in the Designs folder of the same WorkSet. However, each domain would have their own standards like levels, display styles, text styles, etc. So, the requirement is that when a design file is opened in an application, it should use the styles and standards defined for that application only. Sounds difficult, but in the new Configuration system in CONNECT Edition, this is very easy to implement. Let us see how this can be achieved in our example. 

Assume that the three products work on a common WorkSet named CityPlan. The Designs folder will be common to all products. However, you want the standards for building to be used when you open a design file in ABD, and similarly, respective standards to be used when opening designs in ORD and Bentley Map. To achieve this, let us make use of the _USTN_PRODUCT_DIRNAME configuration variable. This configuration variable defines the directory name of your Bentley product. For the products in our example, the definition of _USTN_PRODUCT_DIRNAME is AECOsimBuildingDesigner, OpenRoadsDesigner, BentleyMap for the ABD, ORD, and Bentley Map respectively.

First, you will have to create three subdirectories in the ..\CityPlan\Standards\ folder, named AECOsimBuildingDesigner, OpenRoadsDesigner, and BentleyMap.

Similarly, create three .cfg files in the same directory with the same names as the subdirectories you created above. The folder structure should look something like as shown below.

Now, in each of the three .cfg files you created above, enter the configuration variable definitions that you want to be accessed at WorkSet Standards level. For example, you can define the following in the AECOsimBuildingDesigner.cfg to access dgnlibs, cells, and material from the subfolders within the AECOsimBuildingDesigner folder at WorkSet level.

That’s all. Your WorkSet is all set. The next time you open a design file in ABD, you will see ABD’s standards, and on the same lines, when you open Bentley Map or ORD, the respective standards are seen.

As a side note, you can use iModels to cross-reference design data across design files created in different applications and maintain display and print fidelity. We will explore this more in our future blogs. Do stay tuned…

In the previous blog, you saw how to use application-specific standards for the same project. However, it was missing details about how you place the files and folders within the application-specific standards subfolders. The simplest way to do this is:

1. Create a template WorkSet “Standards” folder that contains standards for the three applications that will be used in the project, along with the common standards.
2. In one of the applications, say ORD, create a WorkSpace, and in it create the WorkSet “CityPlan” using the template WorkSet.
   
   

Once created, the WorkSet will have the WorkSet’s Standards folder (..\CityPlan\Standards\), with all the standards for each application in it.

But now consider the scenario where one more Bentley application is to be included in the project, say Bentley Substation, for electrical designs. Since your WorkSet is already created, to make Bentley Substation part of the WorkSet, you will have to manually copy Substation’s standards into CityPlan’s Standards folder (..\CityPlan\Standards\Substation) and create Substation.cfg that will contain configuration variable definitions you want to access at WorkSet Standards level for Bentley Substation. Note that this file and folder structure creation process is manual. As of now, there isn’t an automated way to selectively include standards of Bentley applications during WorkSet creation or after the WorkSet is created. This can be useful when applications are included at different times in a project lifecycle and we are looking to introduce something in that regard in near future.

In the previous Configuration Series blog, you saw how to include Bentley applications in your existing projects. That is fine for sharing standards across Bentley applications. However, what about sharing design content across applications? For example, in a project, a Civil Engineer creates a road design in OpenRoads Designer (ORD), an Architect designs a building in AECOSim Building Designer (ABD), and an Electrical Engineer is designing a power substation using Bentley Substation. The Civil Engineer wants the building to be placed on the roadside to check if it places at proper location and also check the substation location. The easiest way to do this is referencing the building and substation design files directly into the road design in ORD. This works seamlessly for simple cases, where you don’t want to use cross-application elements or element properties.

However, consider a scenario, where you use the unique properties of elements created in one application that are not applicable/supported or are only partially supported in another application. For example, when designing the building, the Architect creates a temporary fence wall alongside the building which will be demolished later. While placing this wall, he assigns Temporary Construction value to the Construction Phase property. Now, when this building is referenced in ORD, the Civil Engineer will see this wall element, which may run over the road design. If the referencing is done directly, the Construction Phase property isn’t read by ORD, and hence the Civil Engineer will find clashes between the road and the building.

On the other hand, if the Architect and Electrical Engineer publish an iModel out of their designs, all the element properties are saved in the iModel. When the Civil Engineer references these iModels into ORD, the Construction Phase property is seen with value Temporary Construction. The Civil Engineer can read this and if required, tag the wall element as Temporary and continue with his design.

There are many other advantages of using iModels in your workflows:

• light weight, hence iModel files and referenced iModels load faster and navigation is easier
• being read-only, iModels are secure and easy to share. Also, using iModels instead of actual DGNs prevents corruption of source data.
• semantically rich data file that contains the related business information from the design applications
• high fidelity graphic display
• interoperable and read by Bentley applications as well as many non-Bentley applications
• designed for information re-use, can be published into standard pdf and xml formats
• useful for version control and iterative workflows

What we saw in our example is a one-time referencing. However, in the real-world, there are design changes at different stages of a project and you need to always have the updated content. In such cases, following workflow with iModels is suggested:

1. Architect and Electrical publish their building and substation iModels respectively in the WorkSet’s OUT folder.
2. The Civil Engineer references the iModels by relative path.
3. When there are any changes to the building design, the Architect republishes with the same name. Same is the case with the Electrical Engineer.
4. The Civil Engineer automatically gets the updated reference the next time he opens the roadway design.