How to quickly extract cells from a design file into a cell library

By Eiren K. Smith, Axiom’s Vice President for Technology - www.axiomint.com
MicroStation departments sometimes receive design files from external sources containing cells which do not exist in their cell libraries. Until now, getting these cells out of design files and into cell libraries has been a manual, painstaking process. For years, MicroStation users have been clamoring for a means to extract every cell from a design file and place them in a cell library automatically and without duplicates. When I was Axiom’s Director of Technical Support, I talked to many customers who needed to be able to do this.

CellManager’s “Extract feature” solves the above problem for you automatically. The following steps demonstrate how simple it is to do this with CellManager

1. From the main CellManager dialog box, click on <Extract…>.
   
   
   
   
2. When the “Extract” dialog box comes up, you simply tell CellManager which design file contains the cells you want extracted by clicking on the <Select> button next to the “Source Design File” field. You then select the name of a cell seed file and the name of the new cell library you’d like to create by clicking on the <Select> button next to their respective fields. After you’ve filled in the fields, press <Extract>.
   
   
   
   CellManager will do the rest automatically. CellManager will only extract one copy of each cell that has the same name. CellManager gives every extracted cell a description of “IMPORTED CELL”. Remember: cells in design files do not contain descriptions; MicroStation automatically removes descriptions from library cells when they are placed in design files.
   
3. Click on <OK> when the “Process complete” dialog box comes up.
   
   

More on CellManager
In addition to the above, CellManager can do a myriad of tasks relating to managing cells. With CellManager, you can easily.

Axiom’s CellManager simplifies this immensely. Here’s how easy it is to do with CellManager:

• Modify cell library cells to conform to new CAD standards
• Do “find and replace” text substitutions in hundreds of cells at a time
• Plot a notebook of all the cells in a cell library complete with cell information like name, description and more
• Quickly and easily edit cells on the fly without dropping swtatus, modifying their components and re-creating the cells
• Organize unwieldy cell libraries by merging them together, transferring cells to another library, deleting duplicate cells, rescaling cells, changing cell names and descriptions, converting graphic cells to point cells and vice versa.

Click here to find out more about CellManager.

Send us your MicroStation tips!
Send us your favorite MicroStation tip to tips@microstationtips.com. We will give you full credit for the tip and your peers will look at you with the reverence a MicroStation guru rightly deserves!

Back  |  Tips and How-to's Archive