MicroStation XM workspace customization

[ShawnR]

I've taken the leap to start working with MicroStation XM for most of my own daily work, and I must admit that it's been relatively painless so far. I did recently discover something quite radically different from previous versions, and that's the Workspace Customization process.

In the past, you could modify your user interface at any time, in any file, and the changes would be recorded to a 'ustn.m01' file located under the workspace interface directory. In order to share this interface with anyone, you would need to distribute this resource file, and it became complicated if they already had their own interface resource file.

Now I haven't done much more than begin to play around with the new method, but basically interfaces are now stored within a DGNLIB file, which is just a specially designated DGN file. In order to be able to make changes to the interface, you must be currently working in a DGNLIB file that's located in a directory that's referred to by the MS_DGNLIBLIST configuration variable (it won't let you edit anything if you're not). I recommend that you either copy an existing DGNLIB file and remove everything from it (levels, multilines, textstyles, etc.) or make a brand new one and either way, use the new file specifically for 'interface' only.

Let me know what your experience is.

thanks,
Shawn