From the course: Migrating from AutoCAD to MicroStation

Getting started

- The objective of this chapter is to introduce you to the MicroStation interface and demonstrate how to use the various interface components sufficiently, based on your personal preferences and how you use the Windows environment. While the interface may initially appear very different, it doesn't have the ribbon interface that you may have been using in AutoCAD. It is similar to other Windows applications, prior to the ribbon interface. For AutoCAD users, this is probably the most difficult aspect of learning MicroStation. Let me back up a step, and use the file close command to return to the file open dialogue. When you first start up MicroStation, you'll be shown the initial file open dialogue for opening a file. In the lower right corner, you will see the MicroStation workspace settings, that consist of User, Project and Interface. For this course, we are going to go ahead and change the workspace user, to MicroStation for AutoCAD-V8i intro. Using this user, will automatically navigate you to the location where we stored your exercise files from the download. Verify that your project is set to no project and your interface is set to default, or untitled. This will insure that you don't inherit any of your corporate workspace settings. So what is a workspace? A workspace is a custom environment that configures MicroStation to a specific user configuration, project configuration, or interface configuration. Workspace has helped CAD managers, and users, be more productive, by providing a controlled environment for maintaining corporate standards, project standards, and also assist in implementing CAD standards, to ensure quality designs. In general, Workspaces consist of several configuration files, that are processed when MicroStation is initiated and files are opened and closed. Your CAD manager will have already configured MicroStation to work within your corporate environment. What you need to do its verify that the User, Project, and Interface is selected prior to opening any design files. This guarantees that your starting you workflow correctly with all the required resources. The MicroStation workspace is typically stored on a server so that it can control all the resources, and resource settings, from a single location, for all users in an organization. AutoCAD uses a profile to define some of the same settings. But the AutoCAD profile is stored in each users Windows registry, allowing for users to make changes locally. When you get more familiar with the MicroStation workspace, I know that you will appreciate the ability to control CAD resources from the server rather than from the local registry. You will also find that the MicroStation workspace provides significantly more control over resources, and generally, over all CAD settings. As a CAD manager, I can tell you, that the MicroStation workspace is miles ahead of the AutoCAD profile functionality. Maybe someday AutoDESK will improve the ability to control AutoCAD just as well as we can control MicroStation. The next exercise will begin the demonstration of the MicroStation interface, and begin by looking at the various mouse configurations to work in the MicroStation interface.

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