Topic: (MicroStation) what's with all the dialog boxes?

[Mark]

[ http://www.theswamp.org/screens/mark/screen_shots/ms_scream.png ]

It seems like every command has one!

[Keith™]

yep .. they do .. and customization is a nightmare ...

[jonesy]

Isnt Microstation great!

I think you need a much bigger monitor to work in Microstation. Do you have to do much work on that system?
Its not a logical system at all - and it hasnt improved much in the years I've used it

[LE]

Where is the other monitor? - the short keys?.... I used intergraph microstation 4.0 and 5.0 .... doing traffic engineer stuff [for caltrans].... back on 1994 - in Irvine, CA for UMA

BTW, I just forgot how to use it.... 

[deegeecees]

So, I'm not the only one! I thought it was some kind of sick joke when I first started using Mickey S. If you need assistance in any aspect of this amazingly counterproductive software (including bashing it), just holler.

Beware the FENCE...

[pmvliet]

And then Mark will have to start a Microstation forum.... 

the first step is admitting you have to deal with the software.
I myself use it and don't mind it at all... It's got it's quirks but I guess everything does.

I can help with ?'s as well...

Pieter (ducking for cover)

[uncoolperson]

look up "pop set"

ctrl-space puts the current tools dialog box at the cursor, and gets it out of your way while you're doing stuff

[Mark]

look up "pop set"

ctrl-space puts the current tools dialog box at the cursor, and gets it out of your way while you're doing stuff

Not on my install it doesn't. 

[deegeecees]

On a tangible note, the IT peeps are installing Bentley Redline on the new engineers puter next to me at the moment. This should be fun.

 

[pmvliet]

well, our IT peeps, they set it up so that Redline is the program default anytime that you double-click on a *.dgn file.
It gets really annoying when you want to edit the the file.... Start, programs, microstation, blah, blah blah...

[deegeecees]

well, our IT peeps, they set it up so that Redline is the program default anytime that you double-click on a *.dgn file.
It gets really annoying when you want to edit the the file.... Start, programs, microstation, blah, blah blah...

We actually use different workspaces for different clients, I just copy a link to the workstation on my desktop. Makes life a little better in Mickeystation world.

[uncoolperson]

it's the button that looks like a brown (i'm partial color blind might not be brown) filled in circle to the right of [in] "accudraw" or whatever that utility was.... right click on it to get to some of the settings for it, pop set might not kill all your dialogs, but it can make some of them disappear (the current tool)

look up "pop set"

ctrl-space puts the current tools dialog box at the cursor, and gets it out of your way while you're doing stuff

Not on my install it doesn't. 

[jonesy]

I found that if I had toolbox or was it tool pallette(?) dialog box open it used that dialog box instead of opening a new box for each command. But there were 3 or 4 other dialog boxes I needed open all the time which still used valuable screen space. toolbox  may not be the correct name, but its nearly 2 years since I had to use that POC and the last version I used was Mickeystation J - hopefully things have got better

[Arizona]

The northern part of my company uses Microstation while we use Acad, when I saw that they had 2 twenty-one inch monitors on their desktop I thought "these people are sooo spoiled"
Then I attended Microstation training and started using it some, I quickly concluded that it is almost impossible to work with Microstation if you only have one monitor. By the time you have to have all the toolbars and dialog boxes, the amount of screen space left is the size of a postage stamp. I started trying to program around some of this using VBA and bumped into a serious (at least in my opinion) bug. I could not get tags (attributes) to accept values fed from variables. The only good thing was Bentley admitted this was a bug (something autodesk would never do) and said they would address it.

On a slightly separate note, Why do the add-on type products have their own commands? This is confusing as hell! If you're using these commands, use these move, copy, etc.. but if you are using this, use this move, copy, etc.. With multiple add-ons I forget where I'm at and seem to try and use the wrong ones. Why can't move be move, regardless of the object?

[pmvliet]

The specific commands probably have to deal with the database information.
When you use their command, it makes sure it modifies their part of the database information.
if you use the normal move command, it may not modify the vertical part of the database...

I use function keys heavily, well maybe about half available to simplify much of my
commands so I don't need basic dialogs.
Move, copy, fence, fence window, fence crossing, erase, ortho etc...
I also have some routines that run via function keys as well...

Pieter