Element Templates

1
Element Templates

• Mark Anderson
• Technical Manager
• Bentley Developer Network

2
Agenda

• What are Element Templates
• Description
• Migrate
• Create
• Summary

3
What are Element Templates?

• Element templates provide a system to combine
  Element symbology and Workspace tools into one
  system.
• Administrator and maintain consistent interface
  and distribution of products.
• Element Templates are not one thing but rather
  are three parts.
• The definition of symbology.
• The tools that are to be used.
• The tasks that are the work to be completed.

4
Template Description

• Template a collection of settings that will be
  used by the active command.
• These settings include
• Color Weight and Style
• Closed Linear
• Text Style
• Cells
• Points
• Patterns
• Multi-line Styles
• Dimension Styles
• Materials

5
Description of Tools and Tasks

• Tool a command that will be used to accomplish
  some process.
• These can be both Built-in and Custom MDL
  commands
• Task a step in the design process.
• A collection of tools that can be custom or
  built-in

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Usage of Templates

• Controlling Symbology
• To control symbology the user (or tool) will
  activate a template. This template will contain
  the definition for the settings that are
  required.
• Tools
• The user interface is developed through the use
  of custom tools.
• Task
• The collection of tools that define one unit of
  work. Where a unit of work is one part of
  perhaps a multi-step process.

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Migrating To

• Most of the modifications are automatically
  imported into the Element Templates system.
• The process.
• To Migrate your existing modification files you
  will need to put them into the workspace/interface
  /XXX directory.
• They will then be part of the Application-gtMicroSt
  ation group of tools.
• The menus will be in the second part of the Tools
  Tab under the Tasks
• Imported Menus will show up as Italicized text
  that you can then import into the DGNLIB that is
  being edited.
• After importing the tools and menus the workspace
  modification files should be removed and
  archived.

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Creating New

• Templates
• Tools
• Task

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Creating New Template

• From the Customize application select the
  templates tab.
• In this tab you will see the templates that are
  defined in the dgnlib and the local templates.
• Right click in this tab and use the add menu to
  add a template.
• In the right hand pane right click and add a
  setting.
• All settings are grouped by logical
  functionality.
• Alternately the template can be defined in
  Settings Manager or XML and imported into Element
  Templates.

10
Creating New Tools

• You can only edit the tools and menus in files
  listed in MS_DGNLIBLIST
• From the Customize application select the tools
  tab.
• In this tab you have two choices.
• The first choice is to manage the available
  tools. In the current design file select the
  first icon or right click on the design file name
  and add a toolbox.
• Once you have a toolbox you then add a tool.
• In the properties you can fill in the necessary
  information. Tools are defined by two basic sets
  of information.
• One is the General Settings these are the look
  of the tool. The other is the Command Data
  this is the functionality of the tool including
  template association.

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Creating New Tasks

• Once there are tools available the tools can be
  grouped into logical order by Task.
• A task is one step in the design process.
• Once it is decided what tools are necessary for
  the Task they can then be simply dropped in to
  the tree.

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Summary

• This will be a new unified workspace/workflow
  tool.
• You will be able to reuse existing workspace
  modifications.
• Customizations can be centrally stored and
  managed.