Introduction

MicroStation v8 is gradually being adopted by the industry at large. Some understandable reticence has led to this upgrade being slow to gain momentum, but now that bug-fix versions have been released, it is becoming clear that v8 is not Bentley’s “r13” and is in fact a positive and unique step forward in the realistic evolution of Computer Aided Design (or Engineering Information Creation – a strange choice of phrase) systems. 

In order to appreciate the issues concerning upgrading a large design practice to what is effectively a new generation of CAD products, Whitby Bird and Partners planned a series of “laboratory” tests, followed by an eight-week live project test of v8’s capabilities on a joint collaboration project with architects, Sheppard Robson. The testing phase of the v8 Collaboration Project is now complete. In the first part of the report, we highlighted the management strategy preparing for the upgrade and the concerns of the CAD Development Team. This second part presents our users’ findings on using and implementing v8 in a real-world scenario. The conclusions define how we intend to progress the v8 upgrade for the remainder of the company. It is interesting to note that many of the updated and enhanced functions offered in v8 were accepted without comment, demonstrating how successful it has been in providing added value and flexibility to the end user. 

“On the whole, I would say that this is very nearly the perfect CAD package. There are obviously lots of other little enhancements that although nice, don't need a mention here. The good points of v8 far outweigh the annoyances and if Bentley iron out the glitches and make a couple of enhancements to some of the new tools in time for the release of v8.1, it'll be there.”

There have been, however, a number of concerns raised with various aspects of v8’s performance. Analysis of the users’ reports shows in most cases the issues are, in the most part, either incorrect perception of v8’s promises or errors due to sometimes severely lacking documentation and mis-communicated functionality. These issues are covered in the following sections.

Speed

“Anytime that MS has to communicate with an external device it slows to walking pace - if not slower. Communicating with a printer is bad, but retrieving information form the server (e.g. user preference files) is worse.”

“Having to wait while it loads x-refs in dwg mode is annoying too, especially if you are just flicking between two files - AutoCAD scores a point here in that you can open more than one file at a time.”

The most immediate concern that was raised by our CAD users was the speed at which MicroStation v8 operates. On further investigation, we noticed that whenever there is a need to communicate with the network, v8 takes considerably more time to run than v7 ever did. This was most noticeable when trying to plot drawings, which seemed to be caused by an unusual amount of communication between MicroStation and the Windows printers. The problem was recognised by a noticeable drop in performance when opening the plot dialogue box or attempting a preview. 

This is as yet unresolved.

AccuSnap

“Nice idea, just needs to be taken one step further. Having to pre-select the required snap setting rather than it being intuitive negates the benefit of having it switched on and just makes it annoying. AutoCAD wins again here with OSnap I'm afraid.”

Most of the feedback we received about AccuSnap was probably due to misinterpretations or indeed badly managed expectations of what the function can and cannot do. Although most of its short-fallings are annoying, there is still the function of the tentative button and AccuDraw to fall back on.



It was first noted that AccuSnap was unable to snap to points on elements that are not visible on the screen (i.e. the far endpoint of a line that extends beyond the range of the active view). The work-round for this is to either switch to nearest snap or use keypoint mode with the tentative mouse button (instead of using AccuSnap, which somewhat defeats the object of using it in the first place!)

The Identify Elements Automatically function of AccuSnap, which automatically highlights elements as you move the cursor over them at first seemed really handy. It reduces the number of clicks involved in various operations, such as identifying, deleting and analysing elements (from two clicks to just one!). For example, to delete an element, you simply hold the cursor over the element until it highlights, then accept the deletion with the data mouse button. The problem comes when you try to delete an element which is drawn directly below another, or even several others. Anyone who has made use of MicroStation’s ordering of design file elements in the past would know that when selecting overlaying elements, selection is prioritised by age (oldest first). For example, if you have three overlaying elements, and you wish to delete the one in the middle (which was drawn after the first and before the last), using the data and reset mouse buttons, (while checking the element description in the status bar), you can cycle through the three elements until you find the right one. If Identify Elements Automatically is switched on, you have to remember that MicroStation will automatically select an element and that when using the data mouse button, you are actually accepting the deletion and not selecting the element!

Some of the users were disappointed with the performance of AccuSnap. This has grown from the misconception that AccuSnap is a direct equivalent of AutoCAD’s Osnaps. I was also guilty of this! The strong advantage that Osnap has over AccuSnap is its ability to allow more than one snap mode to be running at any time. For instance, in AutoCAD, it is possible to set midpoint, endpoint, center and perpendicular snaps to all be active at the same time. When the cursor is moved over objects in the file, any of the assigned snap points can be located according to the cursor’s location and the types of objects in its vicinity. Each snap mode has a different shaped marker that indicates to the user which snap point is being located. In v8, AccuSnap currently only allows one snap mode to be active, which in terms of speed and effort is an improvement on the tentative mouse button, but still isn’t as good as its rival! Until AccuSnap has been improved to provide the same level of power that AutoCAD users have come to appreciate using Osnaps, longer-term MicroStation users will be hard-pushed to accept the benefits over plain old Tentative. 



It was noted by one of our users that the pop-up snaps menu (SHIFT + tentative mouse button) was not functioning correctly. When selecting the centre snap mode by this method, the active snap was actually being set to midpoint instead. All other methods of changing the snap mode were functioning correctly. This appears to have been resolved with version 08.00.02.20.

Key-ins

With the added functionality provided by v8, it has obviously been necessary to modify the keyins to correspond. This has to be expected, but unfortunately it leaves any routine, macro or user reliant on keyins having to waste time searching the help file for the new syntax. The problem is compounded by the fact that very few, if any, of these are actually documented or known by Select support! This must be addressed as soon as possible, as it is, along with the speed issue the factor causing the most noticeable loss of productivity. 

Text

“Much improved generally, not sure about the text styles though - seems overly complicated.”

The first observation to be made with text in v8 was that when placing by origin, the reset mouse button did not bring you out of the command completely! We later discovered that the Place Text tool still works in the same manner as v7, but the right-click does not reset AccuDraw or the appearance of the cursor giving the impression of the command still being active.

There were numerous conversations with users regarding the new enhanced text editor window and its “What You See is What You Get” interface. It would appear, yet again, that this was down to people’s misunderstanding of its functionality. Conversations started when a user had tried to place a paragraph of text by origin expecting it to appear as it had in the text editor dialogue box. He’d typed the text into the window and watched the words wrap automatically when the end of each line had reached the edge of the dialogue box. Yet, when the text was placed, it was all in a single line! On further investigation, we discovered that an additional “Word Wrap” method of placement had been written into v8 to achieve this. This works by allowing the user to specify the paragraph width by defining two diagonally opposite corners of a text box within which the text is placed.

VBA

From the CAD Development Team’s perspective, the addition of Visual Basic for Applications into MicroStation v8 could not have been more beneficial. From the user’s point of view, it has made little difference, as certainly the greater percentage is completely unconcerned about the power of customising v8. The only notable issues have arisen over the installation of the necessary utilities to run the VBA macros on our network installation. In Whitby Bird and Partners, MicroStation is based on a network deployment, with local installations minimised to provide more efficient system management and security control. This has meant that VBA would not function on the local PCs until an installation routine, vba6_Bentley.msi, provided with the v8 CDs, had been run. After this, v8’s VBA capabilities operated with no noticeable flaws. All we need now is the MBE to VBA conversion utility we have been promised!

DWG Workmode

“Fan-bloody-tastic. The ability to open/reference dwg's without translation outweighs any other problems we may have with the software. I'd live with all the bugs, glitches and annoying bits just to have this feature. Incredibly powerful too - I've had files that were corrupted during conversion form Turbocad to dwg and AutoCAD wouldn't even try to open them. V8 opened them without a problem (apart from the time delay in loading the dwg classes, of course!).”

“MicroStation v8 gives us tools that we always had in AutoCAD, only better.”

Despite having the DWG workmode for editing existing AutoCAD files, we have found that if it is necessary to create a new file in a DWG-based project, it is still easier to create and work in DGN, translating the drawings to DWG, rather than to work persistently in DWG workmode. Editing DWG files has not been too problematic, as the edits required on the collaboration test project have been minor. 

There also appear to be a couple of minor bugs that can cause problems with DWG files being edited in v8 and then opened in AutoCAD r14. Error messages can occur with respect to the “Block Hierarchy” or even more serious “Unhandled Access Violation Errors” which appear to be related to the DWG Options that are active when the file is saved in v8. Despite the original format of the file being DWG r14, if MicroStation’s DWG Options are set to a format of 2000/2000i/2002, the “Save As” operation appears to process the information in a cycle through 2000 format, then back to r14 without demoting all release 2000 information correctly. This can be resolved by setting the DWG Options to save in r14 format, but this adds an extra check for the user if working on multiple DWG versions. It would be simpler if DWG Options automatically defaulted to the version of the file being opened. 

DWG Output

Whitby Bird and Partner’s CAD strategy is to maintain a single, platform-independent standard that meets the company’s requirements and not that of the software. There have been occasions when we have had to make exceptions to this rule, mainly when the software has not permitted otherwise. When we upgraded to AutoCAD 2002, we decided to adopt the use of named plot styles in order to achieve the level of flexibility that has always been offered by MicroStation. This freed us from the previous constraints of colour-dependant plotting where we had to use colours in our CAD files to determine plotted lineweights, where instead we felt they could be used more effectively for visual purposes. 

Prior to v8, mapping translations between the two systems was fairly straightforward, once the complexities of MicroStation Basic had been understood, as there was direct correlation between levels and layers, weights and colours, and linestyles to linetypes. In v8, this task has been made even easier by the addition of clear, intuitive spreadsheet-based remapping files. These work on the principle of providing a shopping list of mappings to cover almost all possible requirements. However, it would appear that AutoCAD plot styles have been incompletely incorporated into this procedure. If using colour dependant styles (CTB-based DWG files) the mapping works as expected, producing layers with a colour to weight assignment; when using named plot styles (STB-based DWG files) there is no provision for defining a layer’s plot style. This results in every layer having the “Normal” plot style causing incorrect hard copy output, unless each layer is manually re-assigned. 



Care must also be taken configuring the mappings to achieve the desired results. Mapping DGN weight to DWG colour works effectively provided the default weight attribute of a level’s “null” state (i.e. undefined ByLevel settings, weight 0) is specified for translation to colour 7 (white) in AutoCAD the level will always translate to an undesired result in AutoCAD. For example, our weight 0 maps to AutoCAD colour 1 (red), used to represent a 0.18mm line weight, causing a “null” state level to always map to red instead of white. This is additionally complicated by the fact that weight 0 can also be the required ByLevel setting where it should map to red!

The use of the Line Weight Scale (MM/Pixel) setting (can someone please tell the US that the abbreviation for millimetre is lower case, “mm”, … oh, and meter is a gauge, not a unit of measurement!) is a strange one that never seems to be able to give the same results opening a DWG and saving as a DWG. We require, for example, a line of 0.35mm thickness in AutoCAD to map to weight 2 in MicroStation. Setting the Line Weight Scale (MM/Pixel) ratio to 0.275 allows this to work on import (0.35 ¸ 0.275 = 1.273, or 2 pixels as it rounds up to the next allowable whole value). However, going the other way gives an AutoCAD weight of 0.40mm!

Drawing File Set-up

“The reference file handling is much improved and the dialogue box is much sleeker. I like the idea of the choice between live referencing and copying attachments…“

Our initial investigations into DWG output from v8 revealed that it wasn’t as straightforward as we’d first expected. The graphical translation worked fine, but the resulting DWG file composition was not as our standards dictated. To achieve the desired drawing file composition in AutoCAD would mean changing the way we compiled our drawings in MicroStation. The advantage of doing this was clear, but the disadvantages left us undecided, so we used the collaboration project to test our options. Working in this manner presented no problems, in fact it solved a number of historical issues, such as calculating scale factors on multi-scale drawings.




It did, however raise some DWG compatibility issues. The use of multiple models is only supported on conversion to DWG in a limited manner. Sheet models convert to paper space layouts as expected, but using anything other than the default model produces incorrect DWG information. We discovered this by using the model functionality to organise our title sheets in what we thought would be the most v8-friendly way - each paper size stored within one file as a unique model, analogous to cell libraries. The A0 sheet was stored in the default model, this project used A1 sheet size. Any exports to DWG resulted in the A0 sheet being Xreffed instead of the A1. The latest build 08.00.02.20 provides a solution to this with the “Attachments to Non Default Models “ options, but this still does not enable us to maintain transparent compatibility with AutoCAD: we need these title sheets to be Xreffed.

The second issue concerns the use of attachment/overlay Xrefs. There is a crucial difference between the way AutoCAD attaches references to MicroStation. When using “Live Nesting”, MicroStation gives a true dynamic tree view of nested references to the level you specify. AutoCAD, however gives an infinite view of any attachment references. The closest AutoCAD can achieve to our MicroStation methods is by using overlay references, which is equivalent to “No Nesting”. Unfortunately, as MicroStation by default creates all reference attachments as “Attachments”, this means either disabling the use of “Live Nesting” in MicroStation or being extremely careful with the Reference and DWG Options. To overcome this problem, MicroStation 08.00.02.20 provides the “Create Overlays for Reference Attachments (No Live Nesting)” option, which still does not provide a “What You See is What You Get” solution.

Design History

“It's been a very useful tool. Being able to isolate areas by fence and undo is good, especially in the scheme stage of a project when things are changing on a regular basis. I would vote for keeping it on for the life of a project, if we could find a way of issuing a file without its history.”

Questions still remain over the use of Design History. As initially anticipated, it has not been used to its full potential, or indeed its intention, as our users were not committing the changes they were making. There is no forced commit at closure of a file, requiring the next user to accept responsibility for the previous user’s changes before they can edit the data. This reduces the expected accountability and audit trail - one of the main advantages promised by Design History, and also renders the “unlimited undo” function impotent. Even if our internal processes could be addressed to manage this, there is still the problem that when a file is issued externally, the recipient is able to see all modifications to the file, whether we should allow them contractually to view these or not. Without the ability to completely strip out all History, which is rumoured to be possible through the use of a hidden keyin - which we have yet to track down, we cannot even begin to entertain the idea of fully implementing Design History. Of course, even if the hidden keyin is published, there is the potential for additional problems caused by users deleting the History when they shouldn’t! The Whitby Bird and Partners jury is still out on this point! 

Training

On the advice of Bentley, we sent our CAD users on an institute approved v8 upgrade course. The one-day course was intended to take an existing MicroStation user through the new aspects of v8. The feedback we received from the delegates led us to believe that we’d underestimated the usability of v8, not only for existing MicroStation users, but also for those migrating from AutoCAD. Even the most junior user felt that the course was unnecessarily drawn-out. Consequently, we are designing with our strategic training partners a more suitable, bespoke half-day course, which will only cover the areas of significant GUI modification, such as Level Manager, Display, Reference Manager.

Standards Management

“After the initial Luddite reaction, I've decided I like it (Level Manager) and it does work very smoothly. The filter option is good and the more I got used to it, the more I've been using it.”

“Still can't get my head around the benefit of this function. I've had it explained by CADAC during the upgrade training, Lynne during the technical highlight and I've been through the Help files myself and I still don't get it.”

Implementing MicroStation v8 has led to a significant improvement in CAD standards management. The introduction of DGNlibs has allowed us greater control over level naming and usage, but at the same time has offered more flexibility in defining project-specific standards. It has also simplified the process of standardising text and dimension settings across the practice. From the user’s point of view, these changes in protocol have been virtually transparent, causing minimal disruption to workflow.

Where do we go from here?

“You could quite happily ditch all of our AutoCAD licences and never miss them.“

“I was quite shocked at the number of glitches after the well publicised 'biggest beta testing program ever.”

“I think it is good that we held off from using v8 until TriForma caught up, it would have been very frustrating to try and use it fresh out of the box after its initial release considering the amount of fixes needed.”

“Even as it stands it is infinitely more desirable, friendlier to use and more powerful than AutoCAD, but there are still a couple of things that AutoCAD does better. Having used MicroStation almost exclusively since v5, it would be nice to say to committed AutoCAD-philes that MicroStation is better, without them saying 'Ah, but what about...!”

What, then, is the next step for Whitby Bird and Partners? We are now at a point where, despite the remaining drawbacks and unresolved issues, upgrading to v8 would provide the company with a sizeable improvement in functionality over and above that provided by v7. It is important to continue to bear in mind the preconceived notions the general user has for v8 – there has been a great deal of hype – and manage their expectations accordingly. What is certain is that there will be a large number of support calls logged regarding the speed, but we cannot put a time on how long it will take for this to be addressed. It would be a mistake to upgrade the practice in one fell swoop, as although the detrimental effect on production would be negligible, it is important to be able to provide a high degree of personal support to each and every user. The fundamental changes in functionality will prove difficult for some of the more “stuck-in-their-ways” users. The feedback from the users so far, has been more than positive.

The upgrade will need to take place over a number of months, upgrading each team one by one. We are proposing to migrate each team to the v8 environment over at least 5 to 10 working days, allowing ample time for the support teams to provide the level of service this will require, beginning with the regional offices, where CAD use is more independent and has less knock-on effect. There is still a considerable amount of development work associated with the roll-out of the engineering configurations, although the critical factor for us is the release of PowerDraft and ProjectReview. Until these essential applications are available, the ability to upgrade at all is still questionable, as our engineering staff rely heavily on these.

We are in no hurry as v8 continues to improve with every release. Our careful and pragmatic migration will provide the company with measurable benefits and maintain our position as users of cutting-edge technology without the risk.