About bentleyuser.org

© bentleyuser.org 2024

Printed from www.bentleyuser.org © TMC Publications (UK) Ltd 2010

How to edit PCF files in the MicroStation GUI
by Marc Thomas - 13 April 2005

The Workspace menu > Configuration item opens MicroStation's configuration dialog with the current user preference file (upf). Any configuration changes made in this dialog are saved in that upf

The following command line will open the configuration dialog in the current project configuration file (pcf):

mdl silentload CFGVARS PROJECT

key this in or add it to a menu to edit the pcf from the GUI, rather than editing the text file directly. Note that the key-in is case sensitive, it won't work if entered all in lower case.

Any edits are added to the end of the pcf in the order that they are carried out. This can make things untidy for subsequent editing of pcf files in a text editor by those of us who like things grouped legibly in these files. If you don’t intend to use a text editor you won't be worried about this!

Update:
1. Cautionary advice from Phil Chouinard is that any %if loops in an existing PCF will be wiped out by use of the dialog invoked by this command. This makes sense as it is fairly obvious that the dialog has no way of accommodating logical loops or other variable processing.
2. Always have your PCFs (and most of your other workspace resources) located in a read only folder with write access for CAD administrators only.

Thank you to Ian Lapper of Bentley UK who passed this tip on to me.