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The art of handling duplicate elements
- a “how-to” guide to duplicate element detection
and removal
By Eiren
K. Smith, Axiom’s Vice President for Technology
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Not all duplicate elements are created equal.
For one person, a duplicate element is an element that is
an exact copy of another element. Type, color, weight, style,
properties, attributes, vertices, poles, etc. all exactly
the same.
For another, a duplicate element is an element that is identical
as above but may have different symbology or level.
Yet someone else might consider a duplicate element an element
that is mostly identical to another element, but which is
not located in exactly the same place. Fence copies gone wrong
often result in “duplicate” elements of this kind.
Due to the amount of opinion, perspective and judgement involved
in simply defining what a duplicate element is, it is evident
that a tool that will automatically locate duplicate elements
and do something effective about them has to be equally flexible
in its judgement about what constitutes a duplicate element.
Additionally, it must be possible for each user to tell such
a tool what his definition of a duplicate element is at that
moment — for even one user’s definition of “duplicate”
can change from one task to the next.
Thus, we have described a fundamental part of the art of
duplicate element detection.
As an art or a technical subject, or as both, duplicate element
detection and correction has many aspects. This month, I’m
going to show you how a few technical aspects of Duplicate
Element Remover, our utility that removes duplicate and
near-duplicate elements automatically, provide the flexibility
needed to do a real-world duplicate element search.
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To start Duplicate Element Remover,
choose it from your “Axiom” menu, which should
be located after the “Help” menu in MicroStation.
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In the Duplicate Element Remover
dialog box, choose “Settings|Reset to factory defaults…”
to ensure you are starting with predictable settings.
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Click on <OK> in the “Factory
Defaults” confirmation box that comes up.
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Now go to “Settings|Change Settings…”
and choose the “General” category. We are going
to tell Duplicate Element Remover to consider elements
as duplicates even though their coordinates differ by
up to 5 master units. To do this, check the box next to
“Consider elements with slightly different vertices
as matching?” and type “5.0” in the corresponding
field.
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Next, we will tell Duplicate Element
Remover that elements can be any color and still be
considered duplicates. Select the “Characteristics
to be ignored” category, and check the box next to
“Color”. Click on <OK>.
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Now, back in the main dialog box,
check the box next to “Test complex sub-components”.
With this option on, elements that are part of complex
elements (such as cell components) will be compared with
elements that are not within complex elements. For example,
let’s say you had a pair of duplicate cells, and
you dropped status on one of them. Now you’ve got
graphic elements in a cell that are technically duplicates
of elements that are not within a cell. Some users want
to treat such elements as duplicates, some don’t.
Hence, you have a choice as to how you want Duplicate
Element Remover to treat these elements.
My purpose for showing you all this is to show you that
these options exist (and why), so you can create your
own definition of a “duplicate element”, according
to the needs and standards of any given project.
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Having set these options, you could
then select the design file or files you want to process
by specifying them in the “Which files?” field
in the main dialog box.
- To round this out, I should mention that once you’ve
selected your files and chosen your preferred settings,
you press <Start> to begin the duplicate search and
deletion process.
Notice that this is not a comprehensive list of options.
I have been discussing only a few popular settings that fall
under the category of “defining what ’duplicate’
means for me today”. Though we’ve attempted to make
the default settings the best default settings possible by
balancing many factors, there are a lot more options available
to suit your personal needs — some simple, some advanced.
I hope you avail yourself of some of these options to help
you in your search for duplicate MicroStation elements —
because, lets face it, duplicate elements aren’t going
anywhere by themselves.
Call now!
If you’d like to learn about other time-saving features
in Duplicate Element Remover offers, call us at 727-442-7774
or e-mail
us now!
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