bentleyuser.org - MicroStation XM, Some Key Features.

MicroStation XM, Some Key Features.
by Marc Thomas - 16 May 2005

Here is our preliminary rundown of the main features of MicroStation V8 XM Edition (to give the product its full name) and some comments from UK visitors to BE.

We all know that the display sub-system has been rewritten. At one time it was hoped that this would be a V8.0 feature, but clearly it’s not that easy to rebuild the guts of MicroStation and it has taken five years to successfully carry out this major task.

MicroStation XM relies upon Microsoft’s Direct X technology, machines running XM will need to be up to date with this and other Windows components. See our feature on the Bentley Desktop Analyser for more about this.

The main advantages that this change brings include greatly increased display speed and the availability of transparency throughout MicroStation. There are obvious advantages for 3D work, translucent models can be visualised without getting too deeply involved in the rendering tools. In 2D the range of graphical effects that will be available within MicroStation will be extended, reducing the involvement of Photoshop in the presentation process.

A long wished for feature is the ordering of elements, the “bring to front” feature that is common to most graphics applications.

Much is being made of the embedding of 3D models and animations into PDF documents. This avoids the need to ask your clients to download and install 3D viewers, all they need is Acrobat Reader 7 which brings 3D right into the mainstream for non-technical people.
Those of us who read the Bentley newsgroups have noticed many questions being asked about the user interface, big changes in this area have been anticipated. The new Task Modelling facility sounds like a great step forward in helping users through the ever-increasing range of tools and options in the MicroStation toolbox. Just imagine falling into Mary Poppins’ carpet bag (come on you must have seen that film!) without a rope. MicroStation can seem like that sometimes!

ProjectWise has been flagged up as becoming more central to the use of MicroStation for some time now. In ProjectWise XM Bentley have arrived at what may be the “killer” feature. Distributed Work Files enable a file marked as “Shared” in ProjectWise XM to be edited by more than one user simultaneously. Users have been asking for this for a long time.

This works, on the surface at least, in a similar way to ProjectBank, where users work on data in a local cache, merging changes back to the master when complete. ProjectBank looked revolutionary at the time but foundered on various issues. The technology and concepts behind that have gradually reappeared in MicroStation, Design History being the first and most obvious of these. Now we hopefully have a more mature technology that will be more successful.

Personally, not having been convinced that my business needs ProjectWise yet, I await with interest further news on how the ProjectWise dependent features will be implemented and what they will cost.

After Monday’s BE keynotes I asked Neville Glanville of Bentley UK what his XM headlines were:

“The display engine looks great, very quick and slick, with now a long overdue drag screen (dynamic pan) capability. There maybe an implication on graphics cards, so we have put together a test capability which can be downloaded from bentley.com.
We have added a hyperlink capability, where you can put a link say on a detail/section reference, and it will take you to that file, either another drawing/model or a specification document/report. Then the neat bit is, that these links will be maintained when creating a PDF, so that you can navigate around the documents in the same way, as Bhupinder says, really cool!!”

David Warr, Chairman of BC(UKI) commented:

“Well XM was showcased yesterday. It will be released in Beta 'soon' which is a little sad since I think some of us thought it was a little further forward than that.
There are lots of new features mainly in the GUI but also it is based on XML, is full 64-bit technology, and has a hugely improved graphics capability.
This includes not only transparency of dialogs (very Longhorn) but, significantly, transparency of levels which means you can see through external envelopes to the interior of models. Graphics acceleration is hugely accelerated.
We've seen a few examples of eg Bentley Architecture riding on XM. Clearly Bentley are not going to release until they can release all the dependent products simultaneously in line with the way V8 was rolled out.
The hot news is that Generative Components (GC) becomes a commercial product Q1 next year following Beta release Q3 this year.
Big strides have been made with PDF incorporation which includes full rendered, navigatable 3D content inside PDF docs. XM allows the attachment of PDF's to dgn files with (I think) rather more intelligence than just straight raster attachments.
Meanwhile the weather is nice and we are all getting used to eating very sweet cake for breakfast!”

Finally why MicroStation XM? Even Keith Bentley doesn’t know!
My two suggestions start with the slightly sycophantic “eXcellent Microstation”, but I prefer to think of an even more than usually confused Keanu Reeves…”eXcellent Most”. (That’s for keen listeners of Radio 4’s Now Show).
There are some more suggestions posted in the v8 newsgroup.

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