|
Title Block Manager: The Legend
by Axiom Director of Customer Services, Rick Sewell
Clearwater, Florida, USA — Title Block
Manager was conceived on the notion that CAD shops need and want the capability to
modify their title block information in batch.
At first, it seemed kind of easy: “We’ll start by making this cool application that
allows you to create a specialized title block and assign database connectivity to it.
Then all you have to do is press and away it goes, updating that database from
the title blocks or visa versa, updating the title block from the database. Unfortunately,
it proved to be not quite so simple. Even though Title Block Manager does have
that capability, that capability alone was not enough to solve the problems faced by
MicroStation users in the real world. You see, that method is great when you’re starting
a new project. But what do you do with the thousands of project files that already have
title blocks?
Problem no more
Title Block Manager’s development team was presented with this problem:
“How can Title Block Manager modify information contained in existing
title blocks?” We needed to create a method by which Title Block Manager
could intelligently read existing drawings. While conceptually simple, it is much
more complicated in practice than in theory. The problem becomes: How can the program
differentiate between the information contained in the drawing itself, and the
information contained in the title block?
Since title blocks vary so much from design firm to design firm, the designers
of Title Block Manager had to come up with a solution that was flexible
enough to process each type of title block, without requiring ongoing user interaction
and manual input. The solution was to design an intelligent algorithm that utilizes
rules described by the user, along with software that can recognize element patterns
to play a sophisticated game of “hide and seek”. The result is automated identification
of all title blocks, wherever they may be lurking. All the user has to do is provide
a few “clues” (rules) by inputting some characteristics of the elements that compose
each of the various types of title blocks in the set of design files. The program uses
these rules to spot all the instances of each type of title block.
To state it more simply, Title Block Manager creates rules files (sets of
operating commands), from the data input by the user, to identify which elements are
title block elements. Rules files are the roadmaps that Title Block Manager
follows in order to read existing design files and differentiate between elements that
are in the title block and elements that are not. Once the title block elements are
identified, Title Block Manager locates all the values within the title block
and attaches Title Block Manager-specific links to them. With these links in
place, users can take advantage of Title Block Manager’s batch processing
capabilities and automate many time-consuming data-management tasks.
More on the database side
Title Block Manager takes data extracted from the title block, arranges it
in a standard table format by rows and columns, where each data field in the title
block becomes a column and each title block (from individual DGN files or models) becomes a row.
 |
| Using Title Block Manager, all the title block information from hundreds or even thousands of design files can be extracted and stored in a single spreadsheet. |
These tables of data can be stored as Excel
spreadsheets or Microsoft Access database tables. The CAD manager has easy access
to the title block data in all of his design files within a single table or spreadsheet.
Though Title Block Manager is already a legend, the design team still
works tirelessly to improve performance, both in the back-end functions and by streamlining
the user interface. With its constant forward progress, we don’t see an end to this legend any time soon.
Call now!
For more information on Title Block Manager, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774
extension 9889 or e-mail 9889@AxiomInt.com
«
Back
|
