Banded Rendering

Contains controls that are used to break up the target rendering subject into a series of user-defined bands. Each band is then processed as an individual image within the computer system's memory and written to disk. On completion of the last band, the rendering operation combines all of the bands into the finished image.

To support banded rendering MicroStation uses the file extension to identify individual band files during the rendering process. The filename format is:

imagefilename.b##

where “##” is a sequential hexadecimal number (0-F) starting with 00. This places a limit of 256 possible bands per rendering (.b00 through .bff). Because of the potential of overwriting existing files with similar extensions, it is recommended that these band files be stored in a separate directory. By default, this directory is <ustndir>/out/images.

With the example 2000x2000 image and 8MB of available memory, a total of 22 band files are needed for the rendering process.

In addition to the actual rendered band files, MicroStation also creates a control file with the name:

imagefilename.bnd

This file contains parameter information used during the rendering process as well as for error recovery or multiple system processing.

Render Image in Bands

If on, enables the banded rendering process.

Banded rendering only works for true color rendering and does not support the JPEG image format.

Memory (kBytes)

The amount of memory (in kilobytes) set aside for the rendering process. The more memory, the fewer bands required to process a given image at the current resolution.

This also results in faster processing because there is overhead involved in performing banded rendering.

Number of Bands

The complement to the memory parameter, this field is automatically calculated based on the rendering parameters and the amount of memory made available. You can directly enter the number of bands, which will result in a recalculation of the amount of memory required for rendering each band.