For Microstation XM,
Notes that maybe someone else could use...
Using dgnlibs to build menus and to manage cell libraries, is a bit like placing water in a sieve...once you block all the holes it works
The newest replacement for the cell libraries (*.cel) is the dgnlibs (*.dgnlib). These files, which are nothing more than a .dgn file renamed to .dgnlib (clever huh?) can be used to maintain menuing systems as well as level information (layers), cells (blocks) and text/dimension styles. To use these dgnlibs as cell libraries, beware that not only must you point to it in the config file as a dgnlib. You must also point to it with the config variable for cell libraries. So you tell it once that its a dgnlib, then you tell it its a cell library also. (No redundancy here). However, once you get this working together, you can attach search and detach libraries at will.
The new menuing system in XM requires the file to be a dgnlib file. Inside of this file you can manage your cell libraries and bring the cell to your cursor point for insertion (no more scrolling..looking for that cell?). Creating the menu structure is easy and an example keyin would look something like this
LV=0;RC=AC_ELEM;AC=SEL-351;place cell [absolute];%d;
This simply says set the active level to 0. Attach the correct cell library AC_ELEM. The active cell is SEL-351 and calls the place cell command. The cell is at your cursor waiting for you to pick the insertion point.
Clear as mud?
The cells are stored in the dgnlibs as models. Unlike autocad that can only have one model, microstation can have many. Currently I have 4 dgnlibs each having (130+/-) cells stored as individual models. These are all small so the size of the dgnlibs are each about 1.2mb and seem to do just fine, so far. I don't know what the maximum number of models is. And I'm certain if the file size of the dgnlibs was too large it would "blow up" especially in a multi-user environment.
Once you have things (dgnlibs, config files, etc) in place create a "controlled" environment (workspace) by locking down (%lock variablename) the configuration variables at the necessary level (Site, Project, etc...) to insure they are not overwritten at the user level.
Open for discussion.... 
