Managing cell libraries quickly and effortlessly
By Greg McKinney, Axiom Product Manager
What do you do if your cell libraries do
not comply with your client's CAD submission standards? What do
you do when your cell libraries become so bloated that it's hard
to find the cells you need? Instead of investing your time and
resources in recreating or modifying cell libraries manually,
why not save yourself hours of wasted production time by using
CellManager to easily manage cell attributes in bulk?
In this article, I will illustrate how to use CellManager
to review existing cell libraries, to export needed cells to a
new cell library based on cell attributes and to modify cell attributes
in bulk, without much effort.
Reviewing bloated cell libraries
One of two things may be the case:
1) by the end of a project, you have probably created lots of
cells (and so have the other designers on your team), or 2) you
have amassed a voluminous collection of cells over a couple of
years. More than likely, in both cases, these cells are scattered
throughout different cell libraries.
The problem begins when you realize that the levels and symbology
of your cell libraries need to be changed to adhere to a client's
CAD standards.
The first order of business is to use CellManager to create
cell library documentation to "see what you've got".
CellManager's Draw Pages command can create notebook-like
documentation of as many cell libraries and cells as you want,
in the time it takes to get a cup of coffee.
By using the templates included with CellManager, you can
generate professional-looking cell documentation in just minutes.
CellManager's documentation includes cell graphics, text
descriptions, cell origin marker and any other cell attributes.
CellManager also generates an alphabetized table of contents
of the cells in the library.
Below are the steps for generating CellManager's cell library
documentation:
 |
| CellManager for V8's Draw Pages
command is simple to use: 1) Click on <Draw Pages>,
2) select the layout template you wish to use (Axiom provides
these, or you can create your own) and 3) click on the <Draw
Pages> button in the Draw Pages dialog box. |
 |
| The Draw Pages output is stored in
your cell library as a sheet model. |
Exporting cells you need
Now that you have reviewed the cells
available, it is time to export the cells you need into a project
library. With the cell library selected, click on CellManager's
<Manage> button. From here, you can review and tag the
cells you want to export.
 |
| In the Manage dialog box, you can tag
cells for processing by clicking on <Tag>. To open the
View window (to preview a cell without opening it), click
on the <View> button. |
Cells can be filtered by level, description (using
wildcards), element types or any combination of these. If efficiency
is what you crave, then there is an even faster way to select
cells for processing. For example, if you wanted to select all
the cells whose name starts with "ex", all you would
do is click on the <Select Cells> button on CellManager's
main dialog box and enter "ex*" in the Cell Name field
of the Select Wildcards & Ranges section of the Select Cells
dialog box.
 |
| The "ex*" tells CellManager
to select all cells whose name starts with "ex".
The "*" is a wildcard character. Notice that at
the top of the dialog box you can see how many cells were
selected. When you return to the Manage dialog box, only the
31 cells selected with this filter will display. |
Once you choose your cells, it is time to export
them to a new library. You do this by clicking on the <Export>
button in the Manage dialog box.
 |
| The Export command allows you to copy
or move tagged cells to a new cell library or append them
to an existing library. |
Modifying cells in bulk
Now that you have reviewed and exported your cells, you are ready
to modify the cells. Without CellManager, this process
can be a tedious and monumental task. However, CellManager's
Modify command (similar to the "search and replace"
function in a word processor) makes this very easy to do.
With the Modify command, you can change cell levels and symbology
(color, line style and line weight) in your cells, in bulk. For
this example, we are moving all the cells (which were scattered
throughout different levels) to another level called "Doors".
 |
| Using the Modify command to move all
selected cells to one level. |
When you are done selecting the criteria for
your modification, click on <Process>. But don't go anywhere,
because it will be done in minutes, not the hours it would take
to do it manually.
ByLevel symbology
If you are using ByLevel symbology in V8,
modification tasks are even simpler. ByLevel symbology can be
defined for each level in the V8 design file's assigned level
library (which can be modified using MicroStation's Level Manager).
When using ByLevel symbology, whenever you place an element on
any particular level, the placed element will automatically adopt
the ByLevel settings set in the level library, instead of having
to define a color, weight and style for each element (or cell)
in your design file.
One example of where this can be very helpful ¾ and save
a lot of time ¾ is when migrating design files from MicroStation
J (or other earlier versions) to V8, in cases where a different
set of CAD standards will be used in V8. By setting all your cells'
symbology to ByLevel, your V7-to-V8 migration can be made simpler,
due to not having to manually re-set symbology for each cell after
the migration. You can use CellManager to set ByLevel symbology
for weight, color and style, in batch, for all your cell libraries.
 |
| The values in the Element Selection
Criteria are telling CellManager to change all possible symbology
attributes to ByLevel symbology (as specified in the Element
Modification Specifications). |
Take control of your cell libraries!
Now you are equipped with this time-saving
knowledge. These are just a few of the dozens of things you can
do with CellManager. CellManager can save you time when
managing any aspect of your cell libraries. Nobody wants bloated
and disorganized cell libraries (especially your client). Make
sure your cells are kept up to standard.
Call now!
For more information on CellManager
contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774
extension 9473 or e-mail 9473@AxiomInt.com.
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