Text Style Enhancements

The redesigned Text Styles dialog box (Element > Text Styles) in MicroStation V8 2004 Edition consists of five tabs; each of which deals with a different category of text attributes. Also added are the Tree and Preview Text Icons, which will be explained in more detail.

Optional hierarchy tree

You can display the list of text styles and child styles in tree form to the left of the tabs. The hierarchy tree display can also be toggled by clicking the tree icon below the Style and View menus.

If the hierarchy tree is hidden, the various text styles can still be selected by clicking on the pull-down arrow next to the Hierarchy Tree icon.

Preview

The dialog box has an optional preview panel; which allows the style name to appear using the font selected for that style. This option can also be toggled by clicking the Toggle Preview Icon below the Style and View menus.

To customize the text displayed in the preview panel, choose View > Preview Text, then toggle on the Use the Following Text for Preview setting, and then key in the desired text characters, numbers, symbols, or fractions.

Preview Text

Right-click options

Right-clicking a style name opens a pop-up menu. The most notable of the pop-up menu items is New Child which creates a new style under the style selected with all the same settings as the Parent Style. If any of the settings are changed, the setting appears blue, indicating that the setting is an override of the Parent Style. The other pop-up menu items are Save, Copy, Rename, Delete, and Reset.