VOLUME 22 THE WORLD’S LARGEST CIRCULATION MICROSTATION® PRINT PUBLICATION ISSUE 1

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C l e a r w a t e r , Florida, USA —You have been there — a project deadline is clos-ing in and you still have to import several giant spreadsheets, contain-ing material informa-tion, specifications or measurements, into your CAD drawing. You try to import one spreadsheet and, to your horror, they’ve imported strangely. The cells are off, the numbers are misplaced and they don’t follow any standards that you’ve ever seen. The clock is still ticking.

Today, we’re going to show you how to avoid the end-of-the-project panic because

you haven’t import-ed those spreadsheets o r Wo r d d o c s . Specifically, I’m going to save you time by

showing you how to paste a large spread-sheet into a DWG or DGN in one opera-tion, even though it

may seem too tall to fit in the border in a sin-gle piece.

See “How to get the Most out of Your

Microsoft Office Importer App”

on page 2.

Try This Trick to Speed Up Design Projects Using the Microsoft Office Importer™ App

When are you switching to MicroStation CONNECT?

Don’t know

Last half of 2016

Already switched

First half of 2016

Axiom NewsImport Schedules and Other Large Spreadsheets in a Single BoundMicrosoft Office Importer can help you save tons of time, but now you can speed yourself up even more. Page 1.

MicroStation NewsEnd the Pain of CAD Standards ComplianceCAD Standards are a big deal for many customers, and they can cause major headaches if people don’t comply to them. See how you can end the pain. Page 1.

Tips & TricksHaving Trouble Opening Your 3D DWG Files in MicroStation?MicroStation can get a bit confused when you’re trying to open a 3D DWG file. Here’s a trick to make it open up in 3D, every time. Page 3.

C l e a r w a t e r , Florida, USA — One of the biggest head-aches in getting CAD standards compliance

is finding a fast and pain-free way to ver-ify CAD standards are being followed. You find yourself with hundreds of files and you have to manually go through each one, ensuring they all fol-low the required stan-dards. You spend hours upon hours, clicking, dragging and changing each file until they all follow the compliance rules. But wait! You suddenly realize that half-way through, you missed a simple depar-ture — and now you have to comb through each file yet again, hoping that you didn’t miss this error in more than one file.

Besides the time

and the painstaking effort it takes to verify CAD standards com-pliance, the worst part is that your energies and talents are being wasted on a menial

task.T h e ans we r to

this problem is sim-ple and effortless: RuleManager™ and SpecChecker™.

With RuleManager,

a tool included for free with every copy

CAD Standards Compliance Headaches?

See “Saving Yourself from CAD Standards

Nightmares” on page 3.

Source: Axiom

A simple way to make CAD standards compliance pain free

End the storm of CAD compliance issues, and get back to the sunny days of designing. Page 1.

x

Figure 1. Microsoft Office Importer can easily import your spreadsheets into MicroStation or AutoCAD® with perfect formatting.

Got 3D DWG files that come out as 2D when opening them in MicroStation? There is an easy solution covered on page 3.

Figure 1. MicroStation Man going crazy trying to enforce CAD standards

Get translations between DGN

and DWG done right the first time!

Call (727)442-7774 or visit AxiomInt.com

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Call +1 (727)442-7774 extension 5343 E-mail InfoMail@AxiomInt.com. Call +1 (727)442-7774 extension 5343 E-mail InfoMail@AxiomInt.com.

MicroStation or AutoCAD?T h e p r o c e s s I ’m going to descr ibe today can be per-formed in Microsoft Of fice Importer for MicroStation and for AutoCAD, with only subtle differences be-tween the two appli-cations. For example,

users of Microsof t Of fice Importer for MicroStat ion wi l l run it from a tool-bar while Microsoft Of fice Importer for AutoCAD users will run it from the but-tons in the ribbon. In this article, we’re

going to be focusing on the AutoCAD instruc-tions. This shouldn’t, however, be a deter-rent to MicroStation

users. Despite small differences, if you can use the AutoCAD ver-sion, you’ll be immedi-ately at home with the MicroStation version as well. So if you jump from MicroStation to AutoCAD proj-ects, you will have a comfortable, consis-tent Microsoft Office

Importer experience on both sides.

Here’s how to bring a large spreadsheet into a DWG perfectly with a single action — not a bunch of pastes, one for each “page” worth of spreadsheet data.

Note: Today’s brief

how-to assumes you have Microsoft Office Importer for AutoCAD installed in AutoCAD or Civi l 3D. This

how-to won’t go into all the particulars of how you work, like set-ting your fonts, your text sizes, your sym-bology (color, weight, style) and your lay-ers. Those are usually a one-time setup for a particular site, dis-cipline or client and you can make them right in Microsof t Of fice Importer for AutoCAD’s Settings box.

1. To bring in a paste, open Excel. Any version of Excel is fine.

2. Open the spread-sheet you want to paste into a DWG file.

3. In Excel, select what you want to bring in.

4. Copy it to your c l ipb o ard w it h {Ctrl-C}.

5. Open your DWG in AutoCAD.

6. Microsof t Of fice I m p o r t e r f o r AutoCAD can paste into model space or a paper space lay-out, so go to wher-ever you want to paste.

7. On your Axiom ribbon tab, press the Microsoft Office Importer {Paste Clipboard} button.

8. If your paste is so

tall that you need to split it into mul-tiple columns to fit inside your border, check to ensure that the Microsoft Office Importer setting “Split paste into col-umns.” is checked on.

9. In you r DWG , choose the top-left corner of your paste area with a {Left-Click} of your mouse.

10. Now move down and to the right to get the paste laid out just how you want it inside your border. As you move to the right, you’re con-trolling the space

between each col-umn that Microsoft Office Importer cre-ates; as you move down, you’re con-trolling the maxi-mum height of each column of data that Microsof t Of fice Importer distrib-utes your Excel data into.

11. Once you’ve got it just the way you want it, {Left-Click} your mouse again. Microsof t Of fice Importer will draw your data in the DWG using clean AutoCAD objects — mtext and lines inside a block. Now, you have objects which follow your CAD standards.

Behind the scenes, besides effortlessly recreating Excel’s for-matting in the DWG, M i c r o s o f t O f f i c e Importer silently cre-ated a link from your pasted data back to the Excel spreadsheet that it came from. There’s no extra step that you

had to perform to cre-ate this link — nothing to add time, mess up or simply forget to do.

I n t h e f u t u r e , M i c r o s o f t O f f i c e Importer will auto-matically and instantly check the spreadsheet for changes every time you open that DWG file on a computer

with Microsoft Office Importer for AutoCAD installed.

Whenever it sees that the spreadsheet has changed, Microsoft Office Importer will update the data in the DWG from that spreadsheet. There are no extra steps to set this up, check for the updates or to manual-ly update the DWG. It just works, automat-ically and efficiently.

Once you’ve tried it or seen it live, it will be completely obvious how simple this whole process is.

It’s hard to choose what’s most important about Microsoft Office Importer. Is it the ease with which you can paste even huge Excel spreadsheets or Word documents into a DWG file, with per-fect formatting?

Is it the automatic updating of that data in the DWG that ef-fortlessly keeps it in sync with the spread-sheet or Word docu-ment throughout your

projects? Is it the fine control

you have over things that impact your CAD standards like text size, font, color, layer and more? Or is it the other 20 years of custom-er-driven refinements to this indispensable CAD tool?

Pictures and words will have to suffice for now. But to see this for yourself, contact Axiom for a live online demonstration today. Operators are stand-ing by!

Import Your Spreadsheets With Perfect Formatting today!For more information on Microsoft Office Importer or to sched-ule a free, online dem-onstration contact an Axiom Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 5346, e-mai l Infomai l@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com now! MST

By Rick Sewell, Axiom Director of Customer Services

Have you ever run into a case where you open your 3D DWG

files in MicroStation and they appear to be 2D files? Well you’re not alone!

Most CAD users aren’t ex-perts in both MicroStation

and AutoCAD. So it is the norm to run into prob-lems going from one to the other. One of the prob-lems MicroStation users experience is they open DWG files in MicroStation and they appear to be 2D files, even though they are supposed to be 3D files. There is a very simple solution to this.

Here are the simple steps to always open your DWG files as they were intended:1. Load MicroStation and you’ll get your trusty

MicroStation Manager dialog box. Navigate to and select (but don’t open) a DWG that you know to be a 3D file.

2. Now press the {Options} button located at the bottom of MicroStation Manager.

3. Uncheck the box labeled “Create 2D models for Model Space” and press {OK}.

4. Now open your DWG file from MicroStation Manager.

That’s seriously all there is to it... Don’t you just love simple solutions?

Send us your MicroStation Tips! Have a cool tip you’d like to share? Call us at 727-442-7774 extension 5347. MST

Tips & TricksDo You Find That Your 3D DWG Files Open as 2D Files in MicroStation?Continued from page 1

How to Get the Most out of Microsoft Office Importer

of SpecChecker, you can create a very ef-fective set of CAD standard rules in minutes from ei-ther existing files that you know meet the standard or from one or more DGN libraries that are supplied for most MicroStation V8 projects where CAD standards must be followed.

SpecChecker uses the rules you create with RuleManager to make sure your design files meet your CAD stan-dards. The rules are stored in text files, which are easy to edit and change whenever the stan-dards change.

Using SpecChecker is fast and easyYou can interac-tively check a single file you are active-ly working on, by using SpecChecker to zoom in on each

non-standard ele-ment and correct the off-standard el-ement by using any MicroStation tool or the optional correc-tions defined in your SpecChecker rules.

If your job is to ensure that a sub-mitted batch of drawings fol low CAD standards, using SpecChecker you would be able to generate a com-prehensive report for all the files in a batch process. You could then have the contractor or drafter correct their own mistakes, using SpecChecker in in-teractive mode.

Generating a re-port is also useful if you are the CAD manager. You would probably want to spot-check groups of project files to ensure your team is following the CAD standards as they create each new component of the

project. Then you could have the er-rors automatical-ly corrected using SpecChecker, or you could send the er-rant files back to the design team and make them do the correction.

Fast pain relief for last minute changesSpecChecker is best known for its abili-ty to perform CAD standard checks on MicroStation files based on “rules” that define your specific CAD stan-dard. Another as-pect of SpecChecker, that not everyone knows about, is that SpecChecker can also be used to make many types of changes in your de-sign files that if left unhandled would later cause head-aches when a proj-ect is due.

F o r e x a m p l e you could change

the text font from “Working” to “Arial” in as many of your

files as you like. Add this to SpecChecker’s ability to run in a batch process on tens or hundreds or thousands of files, and you have a pow-erful solution for making required c h ange s at any

point in the proj-ect’s development.

Call now!For more informa-tion on SpecChecker and RuleManager or to schedule a free, on- l ine demon-stration, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 5345, e-mai l Infomai l@AxiomInt.com. MST

Saving Yourself from CAD Standards NightmaresContinued from page 1

Once you’ve tried it or seen it live, it will be completely obvious how simple this whole process is.

I’m going to save you time by showing you how to paste a large spreadsheet into a DWG or DGN in one operation.

Besides the time and the painstaking effort it takes to verify CAD standards compliance, the worst part is that your energies and talents are being wasted on a menial task.

“We do a great deal of work with the different D.O.Ts (Department of Transportation). They require Microstation files to be turned in to them, so they themselves can run SpecChecker for levels, colors, etc. So prior to our turning the files over to the D.O.T., we check our files with SpecChecker. This saves revision time, and some embarrassment.”

— Sherry Noel

Figure 2. Your Excel spreadsheet copied and ready to go

Figure 4. Here’s your DWG before the paste. The red part designates where your columns will go.

Figure 5. Here’s what your DWG looks like after the paste — Microsoft Office Importer in action!

Rick Sewell, Axiom’s resident CAD Genius.

Figure 2. The number of open options you have right off of the MicroStation Manager just might surprise you.

Figure 1. Opening the MicroStation Manager screen is a great way to start your MicroStation session.

Figure 2. Saving loads of your time, SpecChecker’s main dialog box is shown here set for interactive standards checking.

“The first time I used Microsoft Office Importer, I only had about 6 rows and 30 columns for my first project, but it saved a good couple of hours — it only took me about 15 minutes to complete. On another lady’s projects, she uses about 100 sheets per project. I could see it saving her 30 to 40 hours per project. Not only does it save us thousands of dollars per project, it saves on the deadline. In my line, everything’s needed yesterday, so if you figure our overhead, profit, and all of that, just one job saves several thousand dollars easy.

I don’t know what I’d do without it.” — Tim Prezel, Senior Engineer, Raudenbush Engineering Inc, Pittsburgh,

Figure 3. Here is how the {Paste Clipboard} button will look.

Copyright 1995–2016 Axiom. All Rights Reserved. Office Importer, SpecChecker, RuleManager and Title Block Manager for AutoCAD are trademarks of Axiom. MicroStation is a trademark of Bentley Systems‚ Incorporated. Neither Axiom nor MicroStation Today are affiliated with Bentley Systems‚ Incorporated. AutoCAD and Civil3D are trademarks of Autodesk Incorporated. Neither Axiom nor MicroStation Today are affiliated with Autodesk Incorporated. Other trademarks are held by their respective owners. Not responsible for inadvertent errors.

Meanwhile, Back in the CAD department...

x

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