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                  MMLC UPDATE -- Dec. 1, 1999
              Minnesota MicroStation Local Community
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__________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______________________________________________

ProjectBank, ProjectBank, wherefore art thou Project Bank? Actually at
the time of this writing, it just came out on the Select Stream!!

You got your choice of one humongous 184 Mb file or 19 files of around
10 Mb each to download.

http://www.bentley.com/select/stream/index.htm

We had a really good meeting in November. It's too bad that the
weather may have prevented some from attending, but we hope we'll see
you at future meetings. We still have pop and cookies and sometimes
draw for a prize!

_________NEXT MONTH'S MEETING DATE/TIME/LOCATION____________________

DATE:       December 14th, 1999

TIME:       4:00 to 6:00 PM

LOCATION:   T.G.I. Friday's (St. Louis Park)

DIRECTIONS: On I-394, get off on the Xenia/Park Place exit (about 1/4
             mile west of Hwy. 100). Go south to 16th St. W., turn
             right and go all the way to the end. Turn right on Zarthan
             Ave. and go to the Wayzata Blvd Frontage road. Turn right
             again and you're there.

December's meeting will be held at TGI Friday's Restaurant in St.
Louis Park in front of the old OSM building on 394. The Topic has not
been set, but we will be mainly celebrating the Holidays.

*** Please RSVP to Pam Jones at PJones@HNTB.com by Monday December
13th in order to make reservations for a large group. ***

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:      November 23, 1999
TIME:      5:00 to 7:00 PM

HOST:      Cindi Olichwier and SRF Consulting
LOCATION:  SRF Conference Room

ATTENDEES: Dave Dickson, Steve Stewart, Brian Doyle, Cindi Olichwier,
            Joe Kiesow, Ken Holte, Craig Tobias, Scott Ornat, Dean
            Sturgis, Vladimir Sivriver, Gary French

TOPIC:     SRF and Descartes/ProjectBank

The meeting was convened at 5:15 pm. After introductions by Dave
Dickson of our guests from Itasca Group: Joe Kiesow and Craig Tobias.
Ken Holte of our host, SRF Consulting, gave us a very informative tour
of SRF's offices. SRF is mainly a transportation oriented engineering
consulting company specializing in roadway, bridge and traffic Signal
design. They almost exclusively use MicroStation and GeoPak for design
and production drafting.

After the tour and questions, Ken Kiesow of Itasca Group introduced
Craig Tobias who gave us a live demonstration of MicroStation
Descartes. Descartes is useful in utilizing large raster image maps in
hybrid maps, plan sheets and other visual documents. It is able to
warp, edit, georeference, drape or vectorize very large raster image
files.

Craig then gave us a quick demo of ProjectWise, which used with
MicroStation, adds Workgroup and Document Management Capabilities to
it. Lastly, Craig gave a preview of ProjectBank, available in the next
MS/J 7.1 upgrade. The project tracking, change merging features were
very impressive. Continuing into next year, we can expect many changes
in MicroStation with the ProjectBank/DGN Schema improvements including
end to the 63-level and design plane limitations.

After a productive question and answer session, Dave Dickson reminded
us about next month's meeting at T.G.I. Fridays and disbanded the
meeting at around 7:15 pm.

_________MICROSTATION TIP OF THE MONTH_____________________________

To define a different assumed North than in the design file (i.e. when
matching bearings in a plat), follow these steps:

1. Draw a line (Blvd=63;co=7;wt=0) that corresponds to
    the new "assumed" north by copying a line with a
    known bearing and rotating it by it's bearing angle
    to "assumed" north. Move it off to the side of the
    work drawing area. This is our "assumed" north arrow.

2. Draw a line perpendicular to the first starting at
    the south end and go east for approximately 1/3 the
    distance of the north line.

3. Key-in (in the Ustn key-in window: "Utilities > Key-in")
    the command "define north". When prompted, snap to the
    south end and then the north end. When asked for an
    angle, type:"NO^W". Test on known line with the Measure
    Line tool to verify line reads out correctly. You may
    have to set the "Settings > Design File > Coordinate
    Readout" > Angle > Mode" to "Bearing" and "..Angle >
    Format" to "DD MM SS".

4. Rotate the view with the Rotate View tool using 2-point
    mode with the east line off your assumed north line
    as your X baseline (snap on left and right ends).

You can now type in Bearings (using Accudraw and other tools) to
directly input Bearing angles from the plat. Remember to hit the "V"
key in Accudraw to use the View North (which is the assumed north),
otherwise the bearing you input will not be correctly drawn.

Be Sure to Save Settings (key-in: Filedesign") before exiting the file
or you may have to start all over again later.

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).

_________MMLC OFFICERS CONTACT INFORMATION_________________________

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

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

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