Product: MicroStation Version: 5.5.1.48 Date: October 13, 1995 Copyright 1995, Bentley Systems, Incorporated All Rights Reserved Including software, file formats, and audiovisual displays; may only be used pursuant to applicable software license agreement; contains confidential and proprietary information of Bentley Systems, Incorporated and/or third parties which is protected by copyright and trade secret law and may not be provided or otherwise made available without proper authorization. IGDS file formats Copyright 1981-1988 Intergraph Corporation. Intergraph Raster File Formats Copyright 1993 Intergraph Corporation. Used with permission. Portions Copyright 1992-1994 Summit Software Company. RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGENDS Use, duplication, or disclosure by the government is subject to restrictions as set forth in subparagraph (c)(1)(ii) of the Rights to Technical Data and Computer Software clause at DFARS 252.227-7013 or subparagraphs (c)(1) and (2) of Computer Software -- Restricted Rights at 48 CFR 52.227-19 as applicable. Unpublished - rights reserved under the Copyright Laws of the United States. Bentley Systems, Incorporated 690 Pennsylvania Drive Exton, Pennsylvania 19341-1136 USA 1-610-458-5000 This document contains important information not available in the MicroStation 95 Beta printed documentation. -------------------- Beta Software Notice -------------------- This is the third Beta for MicroStation 95 for DOS and Intel-based Windows. Please look at this release and report any and all problems you may encounter by sending a completed Problem Report Form to Bentley Systems: E-mail: msbeta@bentley.com Fax: (610) 458-2711 This software is provided for testing purposes only. Some features planned for the production version may be unreliable or not yet fully implemented. ------------------------ End Beta Software Notice ------------------------ ---------------- Product Sections ---------------- Installation Help Running under Windows Printing/Plotting Display Drivers Configuration Variables MicroStation BASIC Macros Adobe Acrobat OpenGL Support for Windows NT Rendering Archiver DWG/DXF General Graphics Information Database ----------------------- End of Product Sections ----------------------- ----------------- Installation Help ----------------- For simplified installation instructions from CD, please refer to README.TXT in the root directory of the CD. For more detailed information about installing MicroStation 95, see Chapter 1, "MicroStation Setup Guide" The DOS installation program, "install.exe," requires approximately 360K to run properly. The configuration program, "usconfig.exe," requires approximately 340K to run properly. ------------------------ End of Installation Help ------------------------ --------------------- Running Under Windows --------------------- MicroStation no longer relies on Windows Connection to run in Windows 3.1x. The Windows version of MicroStation 95 runs under Windows 3.1x, Windows NT, and Windows 95. Running MicroStation 95 under Windows 3.1x is accomplished using a Microsoft utility called Win32s (version 1.25.141). This utility allows 32-bit Windows applications (like MicroStation 95 for Windows) to run under 16-bit Windows 3.1x. Win32s can be installed from the CD and is found in the \WIN32S directory. You will need to install Win32s under Windows 3.1x before installing the Windows version of MicroStation 95 There are complete instructions in the "MicroStation Setup Guide." Note that you do NOT need to install Win32s in Windows NT or Windows 95. It is possible that MicroStation 95 will not run properly on some older versions of Win32s. For your convenience, we have included a utility to remove older versions of Win32s. NOWIN32S.BAT is located on the CD in the \WIN32S\UTILS directory. The command line syntax is: NOWIN32S C:\WINDOWS (where C:\WINDOWS is your Windows directory) Win32s is a Windows 3.1x enhancement from Microsoft. Bentley assumes no responsibility for unexpected behavior resulting from the installation of Win32s. Please refer to the appropriate Microsoft documentation for more information on Win32s. The DOS versions of MicroStation, MicroStation Review, and MicroStation PowerDraft use memory resident programs in order to communicate with graphic cards and input devices. If the DOS version of any of these programs has been run before starting Windows to run the Windows version of MicroStation 95, an error message will be displayed after you attempt to start MicroStation ("Error: resource file is wrong platform, Expected=(Windows), File=(PC))". You will need to either use the mark and release utilities to remove these memory resident drivers before getting into Windows or reboot after running these programs. (The Mark and Release programs are in uStnRoot\utils directory, please refer to the documentation regarding usage.) Make sure that you do not have any DOS level environment variables (like MS_CONFIG and MS) set up to point to DOS versions of MicroStation products. This will result in messages similar to what was described in the previous paragraph. A required component for MicroStation 95 to run under Windows is the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime library MSVCRT20.DLL. Windows 3.1x requires this file to be in the \system directory. NT requires it to be in the \system32 directory. The MicroStation installation procedure will attempt to load it in the appropriate directory. There is a possibility that other applications may have placed MSVCRT20.DLL in the root directory. If you encounter problems running under Windows, make sure that MSVCRT20.DLL is in the appropriate location and remove other versions of it. Microsoft Word 6.0 will not properly display views served by MicroStation 95 running under Windows 3.1x. This is due to a limitation in the application's ability to accept the link format used for served views. ---------------------------- End of Running under Windows ---------------------------- ----------------- Printing/Plotting ----------------- NOTE: Bentley does not endorse any hardware peripherals. This includes plotters, printers, display adapters, or input devices. Due to Win32s limitations, printing under Windows 3.1x will support standard line styles and line weights, but not both. If an element has both style and weight, then only the style will be honored.Custom line styles are not affected. Plotting does not have this limitation. The Plot Toggle setting in the reference file dialog has been removed. Reference files were plotting by default, even if the display setting was disabled. This will make plotting more WYSIWYG as well as more consistant with V5 plotting. ------------------------ End of Printing/Plotting ------------------------ --------------- Display Drivers --------------- NOTE: Bentley does not endorse any hardware peripherals. This includes plotters, printers, display adapters, or input devices. The Windows version of MicroStation 95 uses your existing Windows display drivers. The DOS version of MicroStation 95 also supports any third party display drivers that function with MicroStation V5. ------------------------- End of Display Drivers ------------------------- ----------------------- Configuration Variables ----------------------- New Project Configuration files can only be created through a text editor. MS_SAVEMENU is used to set where the menu configuration file (mgds.men) is stored. This can specify a file or directory. If not specified, ms_savemenu.men is created in the current directory. MS_RASTERSCAN is used to enable raster reference scanning. If set to 1, raster reference scanning is enabled. If set to 0, scanning is disabled. This scan will occur when ref.ma is loaded. MS_NOEOF_MSGFILE is used to point to a text file that contains any custom message that can be displayed when a no end of file marker is encountered. This configuration variable is not set by default. MS_CELLSELECTORDIR determines the directory for the Cell Selector button configuration (.csf) files. MS_ARCHIVE is used to select the directories to include in the search path for Archive (.mar) files. MS_ARCHIVECLASS is used to select the directories to include in the search path for Archive class (.mac) files. ------------------------------ End of Configuration Variables ------------------------------ ------------------------- MicroStation BASIC Macros ------------------------- The Create Macro... utility is designed to generate a prototype or template MicroStation BASIC macro that may need to be edited in order to be useful. The macro utility is not designed to be a general purpose record and playback facility. The MicroStation BASIC macro language now includes DDE commands (Windows platforms only). DDEExecute --Syntax-- DDEExecute channel%, command$ Description: Sends an execute message to another application. Comments: The channel must first be initiated using DDEInitiate. An error will result if channel is invalid. If the receiving application does not execute the instructions, BASIC generates a run-time error. The format of command$ depends on the receiving application. DDEInitiate --Syntax-- DDEInitiate%(app$, topic$) Description: Initializes a DDE link to another application and returns a unique number subsequently used to refer to the open DDE channel. Comments: The function returns 0 if BASIC cannot establish the link. This will occur under any of the following circumstances: * The specified application is not running. * The topic was invalid for that application. * Memory or system resources are insufficient to establish the DDE link. The app$ parameter specifies the name of the application (the server) with which a DDE conversation will be established. The topic$ parameter specifies the name of the topic for the conversation. The possible values for this parameter are described in the documentation for the server application. DDEPoke -- Syntax-- DDEPoke channel%, dataItem$, value$ Description: Sets the value of a data item in the receiving application associated with an open DDE link. Comments: The channel must first be initiated using DDEInitiate. An error will result if channel is invalid. The format for dataItem$ and value$ depends on the receiving application. DDERequest$ -- Syntax-- DDERequest$(channel%, dataItem$) Description: Returns a string representing the value of the given data item in the receiving application associated with the open DDE channel. Comments: The channel must first be initiated using DDEInitiate. An error will result if channel is invalid. The formats for dataItem$ and the returned value depend on the receiving application. DDESend --Syntax-- DDESend application$, topic$, item$, data$ Description: Initiates a DDE conversation with the server as specified by application$ and topic$ and sends that server a new value for the specified item. Comments: The DDESend statement performs the equivalent of the following statements: ch% = DDEInitiate(application$, topic$) DDEPoke ch%, item$, data$ DDETerminate ch% DDETerminate --Syntax-- DDETerminate channel% Description Closes the specified DDE channel. Comments: The channel must first be initiated using DDEInitiate. An error will result if channel is invalid. All open DDE channels are automatically terminated when the macro ends. DDETerminateAll --Syntax-- DDETerminateAll Description: Closes all open DDE channels. All open DDE channels are automatically terminated when the macro ends. DDETimeOut --Syntax-- DDETimeOut milliseconds& Description: This statement sets the number of milliseconds that must elapse before a DDE command times out. The default is 10,000 (10 seconds). -------------------------------- End of MicroStation BASIC Macros -------------------------------- ------------- Adobe Acrobat ------------- The on-line documentation files supplied in Adobe Acrobat pdf format are not delivered to MicroStation's "docs" directory as stated in the printed Release Notes. Rather the pdf files are in the \DOCS directory of the CD. For Adobe Acrobat Reader installation instructions, please refer to ACROREAD.TXT in the \ACROBAT directory of the CD. The Adobe Acrobat Reader is an Adobe product and is supported by that organization. Although we would like to be informed about any problems that you encounter with the Reader, please contact Adobe for technical support with regard to that product. -------------------- End of Adobe Acrobat -------------------- ---------------- Rendering --------------- MicroStation can be optionally configured to make use of advanced graphics acceleration interfaces to improve performance of rendered images. Support for the acceleration interface is through an MDL extension which may be supplied by Bentley or a third-party vendor. Bentley will support OpenGL in MicroStation 95 in our Windows NT and SGI versions. The primary reason for using a graphics acceleration interface like OpenGL is to improve rendering performance, but there is often a tradeoff between increased performance and visual quality for rendered views. A toggle button labeled "Graphics Acceleration" has been added to the Settings->Rendering->View Attributes dialog. The function of the toggle is to mark the view as eligible to be drawn using OpenGL or (depending upon platform) some other graphics acceleration interface. If the toggle is set, the view will be accelerated on all platforms that have an accelerator extension installed (e.g. Windows NT and SGI). If the toggle is not set, the view will be drawn without acceleration. ---------------- End of Rendering ---------------- ----------------------------- OpenGL Support for Windows NT ----------------------------- This delivery includes support for OpenGL graphics acceleration using the MicroStation OpenGL Interface application (MSOPENGL). In order to use OpenGL, MicroStation must be run on a high-color or true color display device. For Windows NT, make sure the display driver selected in the Control Panel is set for >=32768 colors. -- Operation-- The current version of MSOPENGL must be loaded manually using the MicroStation key-in "MDL LOAD MSOPENGL". Once loaded, MSOPENGL will remain loaded until MicroStation is shut down or it is unloaded by the user. NOTE: You can force MSOPENGL to load automatically each time MicroStation is started by copying the files MSOPENGL.MA and MSOPENGL.DLL from the MDLSYS/ASNEEDED directory to the MDLSYS/REQUIRED directory. The application supplies a single command, "MSOPENGL SETTINGS" which will display a modal settings dialog box. The following controls are available in the settings dialog box: View Number - This option button is used to select the MicroStation view for which to set OpenGL acceleration options. When the view number is set to "All", the current settings will apply to all views. Enabled - When this toggle is set, OpenGL will be used to accelerate drawing to all MicroStation views that have the "Graphics Acceleration" toggle set in the "Settings->Rendering->View Attribues" dialog box. Options Group Box: Batch Triangles - On some systems, rendering performance improves when triangles are "batched" before sending them to OpenGL. The default setting for this toggle if off. Direct Rendering - Currently not implemented. Double Buffer - When this toggle is set, MicroStation will attempt to display OpenGL graphics in double buffered mode. When used in conjunction with the Dynamics option, double buffering allows for smoother view manipulations. Not all OpenGL implementations can support double buffered display operations. Dynamics - When this toggle is set, view manipulations that are activated from the view control icons will operate directly on the displayed elements rather than on a dynamic cube. Dynamic view rotation performance is typically enhanced when used with the View Cache setting (see below) enabled. Single Precision - MicroStation normally sends double precision coordinates to OpenGL to ensure proper display over a widest possible range of design files. However, on some systems, performance improves when single-precision coordinates are used. The default setting for this toggle if off. View Cache Group Box: Enable - When enabled, and the contents of a view are cached in an OpenGL display list. Elements displayed in subsequent view updates (including zooms, rotations, pans, and perspective changes) will be displayed from the cache which is many times faster than MicroStation. The cache is automatically reloaded whenever the view is updated with a different display mode, so it is best to use the Rendering View Attributes dialog box (activated by Settings->Rendering->View Attributes) to set the display mode for the cached view. Elements placed or modified in the design file will not be reflected in the cached view until the cache is reloaded. The cache can be forced to reload on the next update by setting this toggle off and then back on again. Stroke Mult. - Increasing the numeric value in this text field will cause elements to be stroked into a finer mesh when they are loaded into the view cache. A finer mesh allows greater zooming before curved lines and surfaces begin to appear faceted. A finer mesh also causes more data to be loaded into the cache and will increases the time it takes to load and display data from the cache. Miscellaneous Notes and Known Problems -------------------------------------- 1) The greatest performance improvement OpenGL provides to MicroStation is for cached views and smooth renderings without texture maps. In many cases, OpenGL will render 10x faster than MicroStation. The performance advantage diminishes considerably when OpenGL texture maps are enabled. Texture maps are not supported in cached views. 2) Phong rendering is not supported by OpenGL. Selecting Phong rendering in an OpenGL accelerated view will result in a Smooth rendering. 3) Windows NT version 3.5 and later supports OpenGL regardless of hardware configuration. However, using OpenGL will generally not improve MicroStation performance except on systems that include graphics acceleration hardware. ------------------------------------ End of OpenGL Support for Windows NT ------------------------------------ -------- Archiver -------- Dragging and dropping a directory icon from the Windows File Manager will not Archive any files contained in that directory. You must select each file to be archived, and then drag them to the MicroStation Archive dialog box. Long filenames are truncated to the first eight characters when transferred to an operating system that does not support long filenames (DOS). For the Use Path Filter option to have any effect, the Save Directories option must also be selected. --------------- End of Archiver --------------- ------- DWG/DXF ------- Some of the import/export settings can now be set only through a MicroStation BASIC macro. Enhancements: Exporting a source view with level symbology turned on will export the drawing using level symbology. Font mapping is done in the MicroStation BASIC macro. Cell Name mapping is also available through a MicroStation BASIC macro. Line styles have been reworked (especially wide polylines and custom line styles). Cell export has been enhanced. Nested Cells and Nested Groups are now supported. -------------- End of DWG/DXF -------------- ---------------------------- General Graphics Information ---------------------------- When performing any flood commands in views containing more than 2000 elements, the following message will appear: "There are currently more than 2000 elements in the selected view. Computing the flood area from this many elements is very slow. This processing time can be reduced by limiting the view area, or selecting the bounding elements before initializing the flood operation". At this point, you have the option of continuing the flood operation by selecting "OK" or canceling the command with the "Cancel" button. This applies to all commands that have a flood option (hatch, pattern, create region, and measure area). Using the key while moving a window (ie: tool box) over a dockable region will prevent docking. There is now a toggle (Join elements) while placing SmartLine that allows for placing elements as either individual or joined elements. Deleting the default.upf under ustnRoot\config\user will always return you to the Default workspace setup. The current snap, lock, and level can now be set by clicking data and reset buttons in the appropriate field in the Status bar. The Surface of projection tool now respects selection sets, graphic groups, multilines and text elements. The Camera tool no longer requires a front and back clipping plane to be set. The default setting will use from the front of the camera to the back of the design. If clipping planes are desired, the Depth Display tool can be used. The Insert Vertex tool can now be used to add a vertex off of the end of a line, linestring or curve. The element must be selected at or near the end of the element in order to accomplish this. ----------------------------------- End of General Graphics Information ----------------------------------- -------- Database -------- ** General Database Enhancements * FI= statement where the mslink value is null: If the where clause on a fi= statement is such that it specifies only a single row, and the mslink column is null or zero, (i.e. unpopulated) and we are in duplicate linkage mode, the mslink column for that row will automatically get assigned the next highest one, and will be used as the AE.If, in the case of the above scenario, there is more than one row that satisfies the where clause, that will cause an error. You will see the message - Unable to assign mslink. Version 4.0 functionality has been restored. FI= works where the mslink value is null in both New and Duplicate linkage mode. * Now allows decoding of a DB linkage without having server.ma running or being connected to a database. malDB_decodeLink will set link->tablename to an empty string if not connected to a database. * There is a new toggle in the database section of user preference box for mslink caching. When the toggle is on (off by default) a cache of database linkages is maintained, allowing applications which take advantage of this cache to access elements with database linkages much faster than by scanning. * The Database settings submenu lets you switch between databases (and servers) without reconfiguring/restarting. It gives you the ability to connect and run with a database even when there is no MSCATALOG table. It gives you the ability to optionally create the MSCATALOG table if it doesn't exist. It also provides the ability to create tables in the currently open database. * The fence and non-fence versions of attach ae, load displayable attributes and detach linkage on the database toolbox have been consolidated. These three commands also now work with selection sets. * All servers are DLMs (for faster performance), except for MS DOS Oracle and RIS. * The following describes the add row without locking functions: If MS_DBNOLOCKING is defined (value does not matter) then MicroStation will not lock the table to add a new row. The server will get the largest mslink in the table, add one to it, and try to insert the new row. If the insert fails, the mslink is incremented and another insert is attempted. This process continues until the row has been successfully inserted or MS_DBMAXATTEMPTS is reached. The maximum number of attempted inserts defaults to 10 (DB_MAX_ATTEMPTS in dbserver.h) when MS_DBMAXATTEMPTS is undefined. I added NEXT_MODE_LARGEST to the next mode choices, NEXT_MODE_MAX, NEXT_MODE_OCC and a field for maxAttempts in sqlStatedata. This information is global to server.ma ** XBASE Some significant progress has been made in the improvement of performance in the Xbase servers. The affected areas are: Fence Reporting Fence Filters FI= (setting the active entity) Loading Displayable Attributes (forms and non-forms mode) Cursor processing mdlDB_readColumn function Additionally, there are now xbase-specific implementations of cursor open, fetch, and close. They are in rdbmslib.ml, so the prototypes can be found in rdbmslib.fdf. The interface is exactly the same as with the normal cursor functions, except for mdlDB_openCursorXbase. Its extra parameter is an indicator from the caller as to whether any more than just the column's values are desired. If the other information in the MS_sqlda structure is not needed by the caller, set this parameter to TRUE. That will result in better performance. Also, mdlDB_simpleSelectXbase is a new function. It provides the MDL developer the ability to issue a select statement and receive a single row's column values back without the overhead of opening and closing a cursor. This is an improvement over mdlDB_sqlQuery because as many columns as desired can be specified in the select statement. * XBASE Sample files added. The data dictionary files for the GIS example are now included in the delivery. This means that you can connect to GIS simply by using the menu - right out of the box. No additional configuration needed. They don't have to run build.bat or initialize the datadictionary to connect to the sample XBASE, XBASENDX or XBASEFOX files. * "Script Mode" for datadict programs (datadict, datadndx, datadfox). Script mode is necessary for win32s (but may be used on any platform except Macintosh). It allows the user to specify a script file that contains all of the datadict arguments, and a file in which to write any error or warning messages (the file is empty in the event that everything works without error). The syntax is: datadict -s -o The following information is strictly an example and is not required for the GIS example in particular (see the previous bullet) The script file should look something like: -init -ta parcel parcel -ia parcel parcel -ta pard parcel_das -ta maps maps -ia maps maps -ta features features -ia features features -ta highway highway -ia highway highway -ta mscatlog mscatalog Note that it's the same as the delivered "build.bat" for the GIS example, except that the "datadict" program name doesn't appear on any of the lines. This is not a batch file. You can not comment out a line (ie: "REM"). This script file can be executed from the command line in the Windows RUN window. In the file manager, select the directory that contains your database files. For example, using the delivered XBASE sample you would select the GIS directory. The top of the file manager window displays the path. \database\xbase\examples\gis If you select RUN from the FILE pull down menu, the path appears in the command line. You need to add the script command to the end of this path. ..\examples\gis\..\..\datadict -sbuild.s -obuild.rpt Note the ..\..\ before the datadict. In this case the datadict executable is stored in the XBASE directory and ..\..\ allows you to execute it from the GIS directory. The BUILD.S file is a script file delivered with the XBASE samples. You can name the output file anything you want. * If you are a single user of an Xbase database, be sure to set the configuration variable "MS_DBMODE" to "nonshared". Note that not defining it at all is not adequate. This will improve performance of activities that require the generation of a new MSLINK value (e.g. ATTACH AE while LINKAGE MODE is "New"). Microsoft NT ODBC drivers on 3.5 ** RIS * RIS is not supported under Win32s (in Windows 3.1x) ** ORACLE * Oracle is not supported under Win32s Windows 3.1, it is supported under Win32s Windows 3.11 (WFW) * MicroStation 95 Adds Support for Oracle Forms 4.5 on Intel. If settings->database->dialog->Text Forms is selected, MicroStation will invoke the Oracle Forms 4.5 runform program (f45run.exe), displaying database information in a user defined form when elements are reviewed for database information (review attributes). The configuration variables that effect Oracle forms execution is MS_FORMSMANAGER. This specifies the forms manager executable that MicroStation will use to display Oracle forms. When undefined MicroStation uses 'f45run.exe' as the Oracle Forms runtime executable. Use this variable to specify a different forms executable.MS_FORMSARGS - This specifies arguments to invoke the forms manager. Normally, MicroStation does not use any arguments when it invokes the forms manager. Use this variable if you want to invoke the Oracle Forms Manager with arguments. ** ODBC * As of MicroStation 95 Beta 3, the Microsoft ODBC Access and dBASE4 drivers will ONLY connect under NT 3.51. For Beta 3 and in the final distribution, users must run under NT 3.51 (NOT 3.5) to successfully connect using the Microsoft Access or dBASE4 ODBC drivers. The supported Intersolv driver work under both NT 3.5 and NT 3.51. * MicroStation 95 will support ODBC Access forms. MicroStation 95 supports other forms managers under Windows. Setup procedures will be issued in a technical note upon release. * Workgroup 2000 Tools: To get the Workgroup server tools (16 bit) to connect up under NT, when you install 16 bit SQL*Net TCP/IP (under NT), you must select Winsock dlls, Windows NT 3.1/3.5 transportation layer. If you are under Windows 3.11 select Windows for Workgroups 3.11 TCP/IP (VDx). This allows you to use the Workgroup Server 2000 Tools to manage network databases: startup / shutdown, operate in tables, resize databases, etc.It is much easier than using SQL to do it. If you also have a local Oracle 7 database under NT, you must install the 32 bit Server version of SQL*Net TCP/IP or Named Pipes. It gets confusing, but in essence you are running the 32 bit server listener and connecting from 16 bit client tools on the same box. You can also manage UNIX databases with these tools.MDL basic database extensions. * Basic extensions are now available for all MicroStation database operations. Database extensions to MicroStation BASIC helps the user to manipulate database tables and graphics linkages by writing simple macros. Querying database was never this easy or simple. There are two database BASIC examples DBPROFIL.BAS and DBQUERY.BAS in the $MS/macros directory. DBPROFIL.BAS prints the detailed table wise profile of the currently connected database. DBQUERY.BAS shows how to manipulate and query records from the active database. The database features of MicroStation BASIC extensions are implemented over three main objects: -MbeSqlda -MbeTable -MbeDatabase MbeSqlda: MbeSqlda object helps the user to extract the results after a query or a describe table operation. The MbeSqlda object is similar to the concept of records in a database table. MbeTable: MbeTable object represents a table in a database. MbeDatabase: MbeDatabase object represents a database or schema. --------------- End of Database ---------------