|
CAD Coordinator — of famous historical
heritage — organizes 1,000 cells in four hours with CellManager.
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| Charles Pinckney and
Krista Brechner, at the 2006 BE Conference in Charlotte,
North Carolina. |
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA — Sometimes
you need a little help from your friends. When CAD Coordinator
Charles Pinckney of Perry, Crabb & Associates had the
daunting task of organizing 1,000 cells, his friend in the
IT department gave him a gentle shove in the direction of
CellManager.
Charles found that he saved immense
amounts of time by using CellManager to condense and
organize his cell libraries. Charles shared his success using
CellManager with us and we
thought you might enjoy it as well.
MicroStation Today: Tell us about yourself.
Charles: I work for a great company called Perry, Crabb &
Associates
(PCA) in Atlanta, Georgia. PCA is a consulting engineering
firm for mechanical, electrical and plumbing
design. Our clients are mainly hospitals in Georgia, South
Carolina
and Alabama. I am a CAD Coordinator at PCA, but I am also
an electrical designer.
MST: What are some of
the problems you encounter in your position?
Charles: Recently, I had to condense and update our cell libraries.
I wondered how I was going to update all thirteen libraries
with MicroStation V8 tools. Our IT guy Chip Atkins, who also
is an electrical engineer by trade, had told me that CellManager
for V8 would be the perfect solution to my dilemma. By using
CellManager’s Draw Pages command I was able to
print out a report of every cell with its attributes. I found
out that I had a lot of repeated and outdated cells throughout
the original thirteen libraries. With CellManager for V8,
I was able to remove and place the old cells that were
not being used into an archival library with great ease. I
got rid of about one third — or somewhere around 300
— of the obsolete cells that were duplicates or outdated
and organized the remaining 1,000 electrical cells into 11
libraries. What would have taken me eight hours only took
me half that amount of time and was much easier than expected.
I was able to edit far better with CellManager for V8
than the editing tools from MicroStation V8.
MST: What other products do you find beneficial?
Charles: RefManager is another useful application in
MicroStation Productivity Toolkit. For example, we
had a 200-sheet job with multiple keyplans [Editors note:
keyplans are small icons on the side of the plot that show
what part of the design file is being viewed.] and multiple
sections. So, we had a total of six floors with 14 sections
and what would have taken six hours one sheet at a time, only
took about one hour. Now that is a money saver.
MST: If you could trade
places with anyone for just one day, who would it be?
Charles: Bill Gates.
MST:
Are you related to Charles CotesworthPinckney, the South Carolina
state representative that signed the Constitution of the United
States of America?
Charles: Yes, it’s funny you ask. I’ve often said
that that is my 15 minutes of fame.
MST: Until
now anyway. Any words of wisdom you would like to share?
Charles: Favorite quote which I saw on a church marquee: “If
you do what you’ve always done, you will always be where
you’ve always been.”
MST: Thank
you so much Charles!
Charles: Thank you, MicroStation Today!
Call now!
For more information on CellManager
for V8 or RefManager
contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774
extension 9629 or e-mail 9629@AxiomInt.com.
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