Workshop 3 Notes, Week of September 11, 2006

1. MAP RETREIVAL

In Microstation, go to File/Reference. In the pop-up dialog, select Tools/Attach. The maps are located under the I:/Maps/Cville/CadPlanimetric/2000 and we will be using n1e1.dwg and n1w1.dwg. (Note that AutoCAD drawings pull up in Microstation.) As prompted, change the units to feet (or whatever is desired). In the reference settings dialog box, make sure the full path is going to the model space, and that the orientation name/description are coincident/aligned with master file. Then press okay.

Back in Microstation, open the Level Display dialog. Change the View display option to “Global display”. You can see one of the referenced drawing’s layers by selecting just that drawing. Using select to choose both will show you both references’ layers. Highlighted layers (black) are “on” and layers that are not selected are “off.” By right clicking, you can turn on or off all layers. In this case, turn on the structures layers and off the border, logo, and grid layers.

Return to the References Dialog Box (File/Reference). To copy the drawings from reference only to your working drawing, highlight both of them, and then go to Tools/Merge into Master. Click on the drawing, after which click yes on the pop-up dialog.

2. CLOSED AND FILLED OBJECTS

The buildings brought in from the map are not closed objects, although they appear to be closed, and therefore cannot be filled with a hatch. If your mouse hovers over the line, it will say “Line String”. (If you prefer to draw in this manner, you can by deselecting the “join elements” option in the Smartline tool, making the line a series of unconnected lines.)

To close them, use the Create Complex Shape button. There is a manual mode and an automatic mode for this function. With the manual mode, select the button, click each of the lines you wish to connect in the order you want to connect them, and finally click off the object to connect and close the lines. With the automatic mode, select the button, click one of the lines you want to close, and then click off the line twice to close and connect. The shapes should now be closed and can now be filled.

To close and fill an object at the same time, your can alternately use the flood option (paintbucket icon) within the Create Region tool (one button to the right of the Create Complex Shape tool).

3. HATCHES AND PATTERNS

The first hatch button is a simple hatch; the second is a crosshatch. The default for the Hatch is building scale, so you may change the spacing to approximately 10:0 for city scale projects. Associative hatch keeps the hatch with the object, whether the object is moved and/or altered. You can place the hatch to intersect a certain point by simply controlling the point on your drawing with which you selecting the object you wish to hatch.

You can also select a Pattern Fill. Select the pattern button, and then choose the magnifying glass on the popup dialog. Go to File/Archpa.cel to get architectural pattern options. Scroll and select which pattern you’d like to use. With that pattern selected, click the pattern button on the bottom of the dialog. This will set it. You may wish to make the scale larger, up to approximately 300%.

The final option is the linear pattern hatch, which replaces a pattern for the line.

4. CREATING HOLES (COURTYARDS) IN OBJECTS

Set fill to none. Draw an object using the smart line with “join elements” selected. Then, draw small circles inside that shape. To join the circles to the smart line object as voids, you will use the last tool on the TF/Complex Shape menu , resembling a donut. The tool is called "Group Holes". Select the group hole tool, select the outer smart line or other shape object, select all the holes, left click outside of the polyline once, then right click.

This can now be hatched or filled and will leave the circles un-hatched or un-filled.

5. LINE WEIGHTS / STYLES FOR PRINTING

Using the Level Manager, you can change line weights and styles. In this workshop, we will turn on the roads layer and change the line weight to 1. Turn on contour-intr and contour-indx layers and change the style to 1. Also turn on vetit-ul and –pl-.

6. PRINTING

Go to File/Print.

You can preview your print by clicking the preview option on the right. Using the rectangular marquee to draw a “fence” around the part of the actual drawing you can modify the area you want to print.

To change print drivers, which will change the line thickness and clarity, select the Magnifying Glass icon in the print window. The default is “printer”, but a better choice is “myprinter.” This new print driver will give you better graphic control over your output.

To see the details of the print driver, select File/Edit Printer Driver. You can create your own driver by changing the styles and weight strokes, or you can use one of the given drivers. The weights and style definitions are set in millimeters for this file. You can copy this file to your own working directory, edit your own desired line weights and styles, and save it to use on future prints. This will give you your own custom print driver.

If you want to take the drawing into another program to modify it, the epsscreens.plt driver option is better. The lines will remain vectors and can be clear in other programs. Note that even though the print style is in color, the preview is black and white. This is the way the driver was set up. All colors, except for 240-249, will be overridden to print black. 240 is 0% grey and 249 is 90% grey. Fills and layer colors can be changed to get this grayscale effect.

If you click print with the epsscreens.plt selected, it will save as an .eps file, which you can now open in any Adobe program for continued graphic work. It should open as vector lines.