/Main /Element Manager Documentation
When to use Element Manager Main Element Manager functions Group elements by different properties Count all cells from model Browse Elements Select Elements Get Element Information Create Report Minimize dialog Change View Dependent property Delete Elements of the Current Group Set area for elements Set Table Columns Set Elements Filter Set Views for Elements Browsing User Interface Main dialog Menu «Element Filter» window «Minimized» window Key-ins Settings «Views» «Change Settings» Available values for Additional column

Main Element Manager functions



Group elements by different properties

    At first you need to define an area which elements will be taken into consideration. By default Element Manager takes all elements from the current model. See "Set area for elements" for more detailed information.

    After the scope for elements searching was defined, we need to define properties which will be used for elements grouping. In "Set table columns" you will find information about how you can turn on/off columns in Element Manager. If column is turned off then all elements will be grouped by this field too.

    Now some words about "Additional" column. It can have different meaning, depending of state of "Additional" option. You can find more information about different types of values of the column here

    After you have defined area for element selection and properties (columns) which will be shown in the table, then you can t use element filtering if you want for example, to get information only about Shapes, or about red elements. Filtering is turned off by default. See "Set Elements Filter" for more information.

    Now you can press "Refresh Statistics" button and the table of elements on Element Manager’s main dialog will be refreshed. All elements will be grouped by turned on columns. Field «Number» will contain information about total amount of elements in each group. Also you will be able to finding the Message area of MicroStation how many elements were found by Element Manager and how many groups it has created (the message looks like "Total 280 elements in 12 groups"



Count all cells from model

    It is very common task to find amount of different cells placed in the model or design file. If you paid some attention to the previous "issue"

    1. "Set area" which contains cells which we want to count
    2. Turn off columns Level, Color, Weight, Style
    3. Set option "Additional" to "Cell Name"
    4. Turn on element filtering to show only cells if you wish
    5. Press "Refresh Statistics" button



Browse Elements

    You can browse elements from any group after you activated the group (put input focus onto corresponding row). But it is highly recommended to make sure than View Settings are correctly defined before browsing. View Settings contains information about Views to display elements in, whether we need to scale element or we should use constant view scale, whether element should be highlighted. All these View Settings may be set in "MP Element Manager. Views." dialog, which can be called from main menu "Settings" -> "Set Views…". See "Set Views for Elements Browsing" for more detailed information.

    After View Settings are set, you can use "Previous" and "Next" buttons for element browsing. Also you can use scale item for that purpose or key-ins "mp elemngr prev" and "mp elemngr next".



Select Elements

    If you need to do some actions with elements group (for example, delete, move, repaint, copy and etc.), then you can Select group of elements using "Select" button. After you have selected elements you can modify them using standard MicroStation tools. Please remember that Fence selection better fits for heavy bulk operations where thousands of elements should be processed.

    Sometimes it is necessary to select / unselect only one current element, add to selection set or remove from selection set the current elements group. You can get access to more complex selection modes through little button with arrow, which resides right to "Select" button. After user presses it, he see the following menu with additional selection modes:

    Please note, that last mode restores previous selection set, which may be very convenient for occasionally cancelled selections.



Get Element Information

    Sometimes internal element attributes are more interesting than color, weight and etc. In this case you can press "Info…" button and Element Manager will show you complete information about element using MicroStation’s Element Information tool. If you will keep Element Information dialog opened, then information in it will be refreshed every time you browse new element.

    Please note that this feature works only with elements of the current model.



Create Report

    Sometimes it is necessary to remember information about amount of elements in the file. Or how much cells were on "Level 1". In this case you need to use Create Report functionality. Report generation can be called from main menu "File" -> "Create report…".

    Element Manager will ask you to define output file name and after generation will ask you whether you like to see the report right now in the Notepad:

    Attention: you will see in the report the same information which you see in the elements table when called create report function.



Minimize dialog

    When working with MP Element Manager some users feel inconveniency, because of large sizes of the main Element Manager’s dialog box. Especially space is valuable for element browsing operations. Button «Minimize» will help in these cases. It closes main dialog and leaves only some buttons for browsing:

    «Restore» button will return main dialog to the screen.



Change View Dependent

    MicroStation V8 does not have convenient tools for changing property View Dependent to View Independent and vice versa. So we’ve added this functionality to Element Manager. Also it should be noted that Graphic Cells and Point Cells can be transformed from one type to another just changing this property.

    For operation execution you need to choose elements group and then call menu item «Operation» -> «Change View Dependent/Independent…». The following dialog will appear:

    After process will complete, Element Manager will show information about amount of really modified elements.

    For better results you can set option “Additional” to «View Dependent or View Independent» state. Thus you will be able to see what elements have changed.



Delete Elements of the Current Group

    Usually we need to delete groups of elements. In most cases we can just Select these elements and then call Delete tool. But sometimes it is not convenient (for example, if you want to delete thousands of elements), and sometimes impossible (if you need to delete unselectable elements - for example empty text elements or empty tag elements). So Element Manager will help in these cases - you need to choose group of elements you want to delete and then call "Delete Elements of the Current Group" operation.

    Please note that this operation can delete elements not only from the current model, but from whole active design file.



Set area for elements

    MP Element Manager allows to count not only elements of the current model, but also allows to bound the searching scope by the current (MASTER) file, the current view, by fence, only displayed elements. To correctly define these settings you need to correctly set the following options:

    «File» can take the following values:

    Current Model

    Process only element of the current model

    Current File

    Process only element of the current (master) file

    Current Model and Refs

    Process only element of the current model and all reference files

    <reference logic name>

    Process only element of reference <reference logic name>

    «Region» can take the following values: «Entire File» (all elements), «Current View» (elements which are shown on the current view), «Use Fence» (elements selected by fence), «Selection Set» (currently selected elements).

    For example, you can see on the picture settings set in the way MP Element Manager will find and group only elements of the current model and all references attached, which resides in the area surrounded by fence.



Set Table Columns

    After PM Element Manager is executed all elements are grouped by type, level, color, line style and «Additional» parameter, which meaning can be defined by «Additional» option. Besides there is «Number» column, which show how many elements are in the group. If value of any field is inaccessible then it contains “----“ value.

    Sometimes it is necessary to turn off grouping by one of the properties. For example this can be useful when you need to count cells «MYCELL» of the current model. But cells are point cells and lays on 100 different levels and are painted with 100 different colors. This way you can turn off grouping by levels and colors. Then all elements will be grouped by element type, line weight, line style and cell name.

    You can turn off columns in two ways. The first way – choose «Grouping» from main menu. In the appeared submenu it is possible to choose column for turning on/off. Also you can call this menu with right mouse click on elements table.



Elements Filter

    Sometimes it is necessary to look only at red Shape elements or blue Text elements. But design file contains a lot of element groups. This time Element Filtering functionality may be very useful, which allow to bound elements scope by type or properties. You can call this functionality by «Element Filter…» button:

    For example, options on the picture will show that we are interested only in crimson Shapes, which lines are drawn with «( Center )» line style.

    Element Filtering also helps to filter text elements by text strings. «Text Filtering Criteria» option allows to search for text strings defined or parts of these text strings. Options “Match Case” and “Whole Words” works in the same way as MicroStation’s ones in “Find/Replace Text”.

    You should press “Apply” button for applying filtering.

    After filtering is turned on button «Element Filter…» changes it’s name to «Element Filter… (ON)»



Set Views for Elements Browsing

    If you want to browse elements in Element Manager then you need to set up views and their parameters for element displaying during browsing. You can set these parameters in «MP Element Manager. Views» dialog, which is called from «Settings» -> «Set Views…».

    Every row corresponds to View number. You van set in this row whether View must be used for displaying elements during browsing. Turn on field ”Use?” if you are going to display elements in this View. “Scale” parameter means whether View scale must be changed when elements with different sizes are displayed in window. If “Scale” is turned off, then all elements are displayed in the same scale. If this parameter is turned on, then the field contains the scaling factor for elements displaying.When “Drawing Mode” for View is set to “Highlight”, then element is shown highlighted.