__________CONTENTS_________________________________________________

o   Current News
o   Next meeting date, time & location
o   Minutes of the last meeting
o   MicroStation Tip of the Month
o   Unsubscribe information
o   MMLC Officers contact information

_________CURRENT NEWS______________________________________________

Now that Windows 2000 is out, we're are all anxious to know how it'll
work with MicroStation (all versions). There are some reports of
troubles with older and slower hardware. Now's the time to stick our
heads together at our next meeting and share some war stories. I sure
there are *some* brave soul out there has even tried W2K with MS/J and
ProjectBank!

_________NEXT MONTH'S MEETING DATE/TIME/LOCATION____________________

DATE:       March 21, 2000

TIME:       5:00 to 7:00 PM

LOCATION:   HNTB

DIRECTIONS: HNTB is north of the Southdale JC Penny on 66th St. The
             Address is: 3400 W. 66th St. Suite 250, Edina. Call Pam
             Jones at 952-920-4668 for questions or directions.

March's meeting will be hosted by Pam Jones at HNTB. The Topic has not
been set, but we've had requests for 2 topics so far: Linking
Spreadsheets and Global Origins. Please contact Pam if you would want
to share your knowledge, or give us a jingle at our email address
(mmlc_mail@yahoo.com) with any other ideas.

We hope to see all of you there! Please feel free to contact any of
us for further directions (if needed), to RSVP, or just show up.
Everyone's welcome!!!

Note: We are generally alternating the times between a 4 pm and a 5
pm start to give you more flexibility in attending. If the 4 pm time
is too early (in other words, your boss won't let you off early), then
the 5 pm start time may be more convenient for you.

_________MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING_______________________________

DATE:      Feb. 15, 2000
TIME:      4:00 to 6:00 PM

HOST:      SEH Inc.
LOCATION:  SEH Conferance Room

ATTENDEES: Dave Dickson, Cindi Olichwier, Scott Ornat, Dean Sturgis,
            Pam Jones, Kim Midthun, Leslie Van Drasek.

TOPIC:     Pen Tables

The meeting was convened at 4:30. Dave Dickson was kind enough to give
us tour of SEH's Minnetonka Offices (Darkroom and all). Afterwards we
had a discussion about Pen Tables, led by Dave. We shared our
knowledge about Priorities, Text Substitutions and other Pen Table
nicities.

Someone brought up a tip regarding OLE embedded files in a
Microstation file. They can cause file corruption, but it important to
cleanout any *.ole files in the project direction after fixing the dgn
file with EdG or else the the file will get recorrupted. Bentley has a
detailed Solution on their website:

---

Subject: Getting the hresult error message opening a DGN
Problem: Getting the "hresult=0 invalid or corrupt file" error message
opening a DGN.

Solution: If you get this error message MicroStation will create a
file that has the same DGN name but an extension of *.ole (i.e.
testfile.ole). This file will be put into SE's ustation\tmp folder or
MSJ's bentley\program\microstation\temp folder. To resolve this issue
you need to use the following Edg commands:

set sea/all
set ver/all
r w
set sea/typ=66/lev=20/elem(19)=45086
mod stat=del wh
r w
exit

Then Do a "find" using Window's Explorer. If any *.ole files are found
delete them before you open the DGN. If the DGN is clean and these
*.ole files have the same name you will get the error message. Make
sure the user knows not to open the original DGN's because they will
create the *.ole files again.

---

After deciding on next month's meeting locaton, we adjourned the
meeting at @ 5:45 pm.

_________MICROSTATION TIP OF THE MONTH_____________________________

Include Statement for Plotter Configuration
Files
by: Buddy Branham, AIA- - CAD Manager, Perkins & Will

I was reading through the new printing and plotting guide on Bentley's
web site and found something I did not now existed: an "include"
statement for plotter configuration files. Those parts of a
configuration file that you duplicate in another file can be placed in
a separate file and referenced by using this "include". This is done
by using the %include statement followed by the file name of the ascii
file with the additional information.

I found myself having to do a lot of cutting and pasting trying to get
my drivers correct when we wanted to change something or if some new
function was added to the drivers. After reading this I decided to
rewrite our configuration file to accommodate the include statement. I
am breaking out "size", "weight-stroke" (full and halfsize), pen
setups (gray scale, color, etc.), and maybe a few other things.
Multiple "includes" can be used. Since we have 5 laser printers in our
office that have identical configuration settings (the printer name
being the only thing that changes), I am going to set up a master
laser printer configuration that contains only the
"default_outFile/auto_overwrite" statement and the "include" statement
that refers to the master file.

The following are the contents of my typical HP4MV configuration
file.

default_outFile/auto_overwrite = "\\atl01file\ATL_LEVI"
%include pw-hpljet4v.plt

The following are the contents of my master file (pw-hpljet4v.plt)
 
Note additional include statement at the end of this file.

num_pens%5
change_pen=both
end_plot=eject
rotate=cw
model=HPLJET3
driver = hpgl2
autocenter
border/pen=1/comment=("")/filename/time
default_extension/auto_incExt = '000'
pentable=C:\PWstds\Bentley\Workspace\standards\tables\pen\pw2000.tbl
vectorgrayscale=1
pen_width(1)=3
stroke_tolerance=4.5
linecap = 2
linejoin = 2
miter_limit = 1.5
software_raster/res00
largest_polygon 000

% include hplj-sizes.pcf
% include wt-strk-full.pcf
% include pens-gray.pcf
% include style.pcf

The additional files can be named with any extension or have no
extension. I chose to use "pcf" (plotter configuration file). This is
not to be confused with the other pcf file used for project
configuration files. I changed the extension to help prevent users
from picking partial configuration files (since the filter for plotter
configuration files is set to "plt"). By default it looks for files in
the same directory. Files outside the directory can be included by
giving the full path in the "include" statement.

As a small side note, in the border/pen statement I added a blank
"comment" statement to allow comments to be placed when the print is
being sent. The "border" can always be turned off in the Options
section of the Print/Plot dialog box if it is not wanted for a
particular plot. More information on plotter configuration files can
be found at http://docs.bentley.com.

---

If you have any tips to share with us here, please send them in and
we will publish the best one next month. The selection will occur at
our next meeting, so come and vote for yours! The rest will be on our
MMLC website (see the Contact section at the end).

_________UNSUBSCRIBE INFORMATION___________________________________

If for any reason you don't wish to continue to receive future
newsletters or e-mails from us, please send an email (or just reply
to this email) to:

    mmlc_mail@yahoo.com

You don't have to write anything except 'unsubscribe' in the Subject
or Body. If you want to explain why, please feel free, otherwise it's
no problem, we understand.

If you know of anyone who has moved away or is not using MicroStation
professionally anymore, please contact us.

_________MMLC OFFICERS CONTACT INFORMATION_________________________

If you want to contact one of MMLC's current Officers:

    Chair:      Dave Dickson       ddickson@sehinc.com
    Vice Chair: Dean Sturgis       dean.sturgis@dot.state.mn.us
    Secretary:  Scott Ornat        sornat@ci.minnetonka.mn.us
    Treasurer:  Cindi Olichwier    colichwier@srfconsulting.com
    Web Design: Pam Jones          PJones@HNTB.com

For general questions regarding MMLC, please send email to our
Official Web-Mail address at:

    mmlc_mail@yahoo.com

Remember to check the MMLC Website:

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