Using MicroStation Text

An engineering drawing always has text. In this section we will discuss about placing and editing text, changing the text attribute, and understanding text style. Here are the text tool you can find in text tools group.

Placing and Editing Text

Placing Text

You can place text by activating place text tool. After you activate the place text tool, MicroStation will open the Word Processor Window.Type the text you want in the Word Processor, use the ruler to arrange the paragraph, tabs. You can also create superscript, subscript, insert symbols, etc. This is just like a simple version of Word Processor you use in the office!

After you finish, simply click data point in the position you wanted.

Editing Text

You can edit text by:

1. Double click the text
2. Select the text, hold [reset] until you see the context menu, and select edit text.
3. Click edit text button from task navigation.

Tips: Right click is the reset button, it has been a default button in MicroStation for years. But since Windows offers right click as contextual menu, we can use it too. Just hold it a little longer.

Edit text is not just for editing the text content. We can also use it for editing the text attribute. Look at the tool settings. You can change the value and accept it by clicking data point on your screen.

Text Style and Text Attribute

We can save the common text attribute we use in a text style. If your texts are using a text style, when you change the text style attributes, all texts using the same style will be updated. However, you can override the style attributes in tool settings before placement. But if you do this, then when the style attributes updated, the overridden attributes will not be updated too.

You can create and manage text style by accessing menu element>text styles.

I think most of the settings are self explained.

Challenge

Open place text.dgn. Give the room name using text. Label the coordinate, and give the floor plan a title.

Play around with placement method, style, and justification.

You can see the animation here.

About Edwin Prakoso

I work as a Sr. Consultant in PT Cipta Satria Informatika. I've been using AutoCAD since R14 and Revit since Revit Building 9. I occasionally write for AUGIWorld magazine and I am also active in Autodesk discussion forum. I'm a member of Autodesk Expert Elite, an appreciation for individuals who give contributions to the Autodesk community.
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