• Home
  • Training Books
  • Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter
  • About
    • Contributors
    • Feedback
    • Contact
    • Privacy policy
    • Cookie Policy

CADnotes

CAD Tutorials and Best Practices for professionals and students

  • Featured
  • AutoCAD
    • AutoLISP
  • Revit
    • Revit Architecture Basic
    • Revit MEP Basic Tutorial
  • Inventor
  • MicroStation
    • MicroStation Basic Tutorial
  • CADnotes on YouTube
You are here: Home / MicroStation / Working With MicroStation Views

Working With MicroStation Views

February 16, 2010 by Edwin Prakoso 4 Comments

In this Article...

  • Arrange and Manage MicroStation Views
  • View Control
  • View Attributes
  • MicroStation Saved Views

When we do a design in MicroStation, our design can be very large or complex. It will be very useful if we can open several views to see the design from different angle/perspective (for 3D) or simply open different views to show different areas. Imagine you have a very large area. Instead of zooming and panning every time you want to see different area, you can show them in different views. It will be more useful if you work with multiple monitors with your workstation. MicroStation allows you to do that. We can open 8 views simultaneously when working with a MicroStation design file.

The interesting thing about MicroStation views is, we can treat them individually. Each of them can represent any part of your design from different angle with different properties. Let’s take a look at this example.

 MicroStation_with_4_different_views

  • View 1 is the ‘fit view’ of our project.
  • View 2 is the larger view of the north area of our building.
  • Now take a look to view 3. It is a rotated view of our project!
  • Still not impressed? In view 4, we can hide some annotation and building details!

We can open/close a view by clicking the view buttons in view groups.

MicroStation_View_Control

Arrange and Manage MicroStation Views

After we open several views, we can tile or arrange them just like in other Windows applications: using windows menu>tile. You can cascade or arrange them too.

MicroStation_Window_Control

However, sometimes it’s easier to meet our requirement just by dragging the views corner, and drag the title bar to move the views to their desired position.

dragging_MicroStation_Windows_corner

When we work with common views arrangement, we can save the MicroStation views arrangement using view group. We will do MicroStation view exercises later.

Manage_MicroStation_View_Group

View Control

Each MicroStation view has a view control bar. You can zoom, rotate, and pan your views individually. And you can get previous/next view from each of them too!

MicroStation_View_Control_Bar

If each of them has a view control, then how does it work? Simple. You can activate the view control tool in any view, and click in whichever view you want. It will control the view you click. Doesn’t matter where you activated the tool. This applies to all view control, except for rotate view and window area.

For rotate view, it will rotate the view where you activate the tool. But you can click in other view to get the reference points.

And for Windows area, you can select where you want the area to be shown. You can define area in view 3, but show the selected area in view 1.

MicroStation_Window_Area_Tool_Settings

View Attributes

Each MicroStation view has view attributes. We can control them individually. For example, we can show annotations in view 1, but turn them off in view 2. Or shading in view 1, but wireframe in view 3 (for 3d design).

MicroStation_View_Attributes

MicroStation Saved Views

If you have many view configurations that you want to keep, you can use saved views. Saved views will save your configuration for individual view. This is different with view group. View group saves the views arrangement and location. Saved views save how your views are set.

MicroStation_Saved_Views

In the next tutorial, we will practice with view control and view arrangement.

About Edwin Prakoso

I work as a Solution Consultant in Datech Solutions, Tech Data Indonesia. 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.
Connect with me on twitter or LinkedIn. If you want to have my new articles sent to your email inbox, you can subscribe to the newsletter.

Filed Under: MicroStation Tagged With: MicroStation Basic, MicroStation views, view attributes, view control

3 1 vote
Article Rating
Subscribe
Login
Notify of
guest

guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

4 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bobby
Bobby
11 years ago

Is it possible to change level colors in each view. IE shade back certain elements in one view and then bring others to light in another? Then I would like to know if it is possible to save the state of the levels for each view?

1
Reply
Edwin Prakoso
Edwin Prakoso
Author
12 years ago

Jason,

I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with MicroStation VBA.

0
Reply
jason lafferty
jason lafferty
12 years ago

hi i was wondering about saving views using VBA. I have to make 3 saved views of each object i have, one front, side and plan. the only diffrence in the saved views for each is _F, _R, _T. The problem i have is i dont know how to stop the name and description from being a user input? if you could point me in the right direction that would be greatly appreciated. (Macro gets Plan Front View 1, Front from View 3 and Side from View 4)

0
Reply
new2micro
new2micro
12 years ago

impressed!!!

0
Reply
wpdiscuz   wpDiscuz
Join Our Free Email Newsletter
  Thank you for Signing Up
Please correct the marked field(s) below.
1,true,6,Contact Email,2 1,false,1,First Name,2 1,false,1,Last Name,2

Featured

best training

The Best, the Rest, the Rare: 100 AutoCAD Tips You Should Know

A compilation of AutoCAD tips. Read all 100 of them to increase your productivity!

Recent Articles

  • Revit 2024.1 Update is Released
  • What’s New in Revit 2024: Bending Detail
  • What’s New in Revit 2024: The Dark Theme

Advertisement

New on CADnotes

  • Revit 2024.1 Update is Released
  • What’s New in Revit 2024: Bending Detail
  • What’s New in Revit 2024: The Dark Theme
  • Autodesk Build: Using Assets for Progress Tracking
  • My Home on the ACC Unified Platform

Meet the Authors

avatar for
avatar for
avatar for
avatar for
avatar for
avatar for

Get Connected

CADnotes on FacebookCADnotes on InstagramCADnotes on TwitterCADnotes on YouTube

© 2009 – 2023 CADnotes · Feedback · Privacy Policy · Become an affiliate

wpDiscuz