How to Do Four Hours of Title Block Changes in Just a Few Minutes

This also works if you use ProjectWise

If you work with title blocks in MicroStation, most likely you’ve had a situation where you’ve had a design file added to a project (which may have been stored in ProjectWise) requiring you to now renumber all or a large portion of the files in the project. Whether the files are in ProjectWise or not, manually making changes to title blocks across entire plot sets takes a lot of time. Isn’t there a faster way?

How to Quickly Renumber 278 Sheets
Imagine that it’s late Friday afternoon and your project is due out on Monday. Your project team spent the last few days putting the final touches on the job. All the 278 sheets have been plotted for the final check. Everything appears to be in order, the design files are all checked back into ProjectWise and the tension is starting to ease. You decide to do one final check and — horror — discover that the sheet numbers are wrong. The sheet total is off by one on every sheet and every sheet number higher than 14 is off by one.

If you can modify one sheet per minute, stay on task, not get any phone calls, and not make any mistakes, then you’ll need four hours and 38 minutes just to modify the text on all 278 design files. Well, you could stay really late or maybe come in and work over the weekend and do all that work, but part of Axiom’s purpose is to “get you home on time”. Title Block Manager brings this part of our purpose to life. With Title Block Manager, all the design files can be updated in about five minutes. Here’s how:

1. Open MicroStation and start Title Block Administrator. (Title Block Administrator is half of Axiom’s Title Block Manager system. Paired with Title Block Client, these programs allow users to place and edit title blocks in batch.)
2. With Title Block Administrator loaded, click on the {Select…} button next the “Database” field. Navigate to and select your Microsoft Excel (or Access) database. If you are connected to ProjectWise, you’ll be able to browse ProjectWise at this point to choose your files.

Figure 1. With Title Block Manager, you can quickly and easily renumber all 278 title blocks at one time even if your files are in ProjectWise.

1. Click on the {Edit Database} button on the Title Block Administrator main dialog box. This will open the database selected in step 2 above. (This is usually an Excel spreadsheet, but Title Block Manager also supports Access MDB databases in addition to Excel spreadsheets, so we call XLS and MDB files the “database” for consistency.)
2. In Excel, increment the values in the “Sheet” column to accommodate the renumbering. Save and close the “database”. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. Title Block Manager allows you to easily make changes — in batch — to all your title blocks. This graphic shows that a new sheet has been added to a set of design files (Before). It only takes a few seconds to update all of the numbers in the Excel spreadsheet (After) and then to update all the applicable designs files from the Excel spreadsheet, using Title Block Manager.

1. Press the {Select } button next to the “Design Files:” field in the main Title Block Administrator dialog box. This will load the “Choose Files to Process” dialog box that allows you to select the sheet files for processing.
2. Set “Action:” to {Update selected files from database}. Click {Start}.
3. Check your e-mail, get some coffee and a few minutes later the job is complete.

Why spend over four hours on something that can be done in a few minutes? Wouldn’t you rather use that time to play some golf, catch a movie, watch a game, read a good book, or brush up on your barbecuing skills?

Start Saving Time Today!
For more information on Title Block Manager or to receive a free trial version to see the benefits for yourself, contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774 extension 1508, e-mail 1508@AxiomInt.com or visit Axiom on the Web at www.AxiomInt.com now!

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