MicroStation BatchPlot TechNote

Index:

1. What is BatchPlot?
2. Using BatchPlot
3. Plot Specifications
4. Starting the BatchPlot Process
5. Managing Plot Specifications
6. BatchPlot Key-In Interface
7. Files and Directories

1. What is BatchPlot? 

2. Using BatchPlot 

Selecting Design Files to Plot (See Figure 1)

1. Begin by choosing File > Batch Print/Plot to start BatchPlot. The BatchPlot dialog box opens.
2. From the BatchPlot dialog box choose Edit > Add Files.
3. Select the file names you want to plot. You may use the <Shift> and <Ctrl> keys to select inclusive and individual files from the list. You may also double­click individual files to add them.
4. Click Add when you have selected the desired files.
5. Click Done and the files are now added to the Design Files to Plot list.
6. Files may be moved within the list to change the processing order. Use either the move options under the BatchPlot Edit menu, or the keyboard accelerators associated with them (accelerators are only available for Move Files Up (<Ctrl-U>) and Move Files Down (<Ctrl-D>).
7. Files may be removed from the Design Files to Plot list be selecting the file(s) and choosing Edit > Remove Files.

   Notes: Adding design files by dragging and dropping onto the Batch Plot dialog box is supported. Also, many commands have icons available in the main BatchPlot dialog box. Pause the mouse cursor on an icon to see its function.

Figure 1

Adding Design Files to be Plotted

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3. Plot Specifications 

1. Printer Specifications: Describe the target printer, paper size, and post-processing options.
2. Plot Area Specifications: Select the portion or portions of a design file to plot. A plot area specification essentially describes a view or the equivalent of one or more fences in a view.
3. Plot Layout Specifications: Determine the size and position of the plot given a particular plot area, paper size, and paper orientation.
4. Plot Display Specifications: Identify a pen table and/or control view attributes (turn text node and construction lines off, etc.) and plot options (display fence boundary, display plot border).

When you first load BatchPlot, the four types start with Default specifications (as seen in the Printer, Plot Area and Layout types shown in Figure 1). The Display type in the Figure 1 has a different specification setting (the No Fast, No Constructions, No Text Nodes specification). Each specification can contain it's own settings, letting you easily save and load specific settings.

To load a specification, first select the type you wish to change from the Specifications Controlling Plotting list, then choose Specifications > Select from the BatchPlot dialog box. You will see a list of available specifications for that type. Select a specification from this list and click OK. For information on managing specifications, see Managing Plot Specifications.

Printer Specifications
A printer specification selects a MicroStation plotter driver, a paper size and orientation and specifies post-processing options.

1. In the Batch Plot dialog box, double click Printer in the Specifications Controlling Printing window.
2. The Printer Specification dialog box opens and shows the default properties of the current printer.
3. Click the Driver button to select a driver file. To select a system printer click the Use System Printer button. The System Printer option is available only on operating systems that support a system printer concept, such as Microsoft Windows®.

   The Use System Printer button automatically selects MicroStation's PRINTER.PLT driver file. When PRINTER.PLT is selected, the properties dialog box becomes smaller, hiding the paper and post-processing items (see Figure 2). You may select a specific system printer or change its settings from the Plot dialog box accessed through MicroStation's File > Print/Plot option, or through BatchPlot's File > Print > Setup System Printer.

   Figure 2

   System Printer Properties Dialog Box

   If you click the Driver... button and select a driver file that does not correspond to the system printer, the dialog reverts to its original size. Click OK to accept the modifications to the Printer Specification Properties.

4. If you select a MicroStation plotter driver other than PRINTER.PLT, choose Paper Size and Units (ft, in, mm, cm, dm, m) in the Paper section.
5. Select the desired paper orientation from the Orientation section (plot rotation).
6. From the Output and Post Processing section, select File or Device.

   File (See Figure 3)
   If File is selected the plot will be plotted to the directory specified in the MS_PLTFILES configuration variable. The format of the filenames assigned to the plotfiles can be changed by clicking the Name button and using the controls. By default, plotfiles are named after the design with a three-digit numeric extension (example: filename.000, filename.002, filename.003).

   Note: Some file formats produce long filenames which exceed the filename length restrictions of some operating systems (DOS and some older versions of UNIX). Make sure the format you select is appropriate for your operating system.

   Figure 3

   Plot Filename Format

   Format options labeled with <extension> will allow you to specify a file extension in the Extension field. Choosing Custom activates both the String and Extension fields for entry of a custom format. This format can be ordinary characters plus any combination of the following substitution strings:

   Substitution String	Replaced By
   %j	Base job set file name ("batchplt" if job set is untitled)
   %d	Base design file name (no directory or extension)
   %e	Contents of Extensions field
   %p	Three­digit plot counter starting with 000. This counter is not reset between design files in a job set. The counter range is from 000 to 999.
   %b	Three­digit per­design­file plot boundary counter starting at 000. This counter resets between design files in a job set. The counter range is from 000 to 999.

   File Substitution Strings

   When output is to a file, the Plot Cmd field is available. To specify an operating system command to be executed for each generated plot file, type the command into the Plot Cmd field, using %f to represent the plot file name. For example, you may specify lpr %f on a UNIX system to spool generated plot files.

   Device (See Figure 4)
   If Device rather than File is selected, a port field is displayed. A port name such as LPT1 or a UNC (uniform naming convention) can be entered in this field. Typing a name in this field has the same effect as adding a default_outFile=filename line to a plotter driver (.PLT) file.

   Note: Names prefixed with \\ indicate a resource name on the network and are called uniform naming convention names. For example, \\servername\sharename on Windows systems.

   Figure 4

   Selecting Printer Specifications

Plot Area Specifications
A plot area specification describes how BatchPlot determines which portion of each design file to print or plot. The two basic options are either a view or an area bounded by a shape or a cell. Because fences are not stored in design files, and because BatchPlot is essentially non-interactive when it starts printing, BatchPlot dynamically creates fences from particular boundary­defining elements (much like a user places a fence by snapping to the vertices of a shape). The Plot Area Specification Properties dialog box allows you to describe the characteristics of these elements. The first step in defining the plot area is designating a reference view. This view determines the default plot options viewing angle and, in 3D files, front and back clipping planes.

1. In the BatchPlot dialog box, double click Plot Area in the Specifications Controlling Printing window.
2. The Plot Area Specifications Properties Dialog Box opens.

View (see Figure 5)
If plotting by view, choose the number of the desired view or Saved view. If you choose Saved view, key in the saved view name.

Selecting Plot Area by View

Selecting Plot Area by Saved View

Figure 5

If you simply want to plot a view in each file, select View from the Method option, and you're done. If you want to plot the area bounded by a particular shape element or cell within a view, select Shape or Cell as the Method. When plotting by bounded areas, BatchPlot constructs a plot fence from the element, as seen in the reference view.

Shape (see Figure 6)
If you select Shape, describe the characteristics of the shape, being as specific as possible, by entering values into the appropriate fields:

1. From the method option choose Shape and select the attributes that define the shape (level, color, style and weight).
2. By default BatchPlot searches each master file and all reference files to find the shape. You may turn off the Master file and/or the Reference file to eliminate them from the search. If Reference files are selected you may also include the logical names or filenames in the Reference Files field.

   Selecting Plot Area by Shape

   Figure 6

3. If a design file contains more than one boundary element, you may turn on Process Multiple Boundary Elements, and BatchPlot will generate a plot for each boundary found. If this option is turned off, BatchPlot will plot only the first element.
4. Click OK to accept the modifications to the Plot Area specification properties.

Cell (See Figure 7)

1. From the method option choose Cell and key in the name of the cell in the Name field. The cell name may be a literal name (border) or a regular expression (for example, bdr.* to match any cell name starting with bdr).

   Note: If you use a Windows/DOS-style wildcard search (for example, bdr* in the previous example) it will not work. You must use the <string>.* method to find cells that begin with <string>

2. By default BatchPlot searches each master file and all reference files to find the cell.
3. If a design file contains more than one boundary element (the named cell), you may turn on Process Multiple Boundary Elements, and BatchPlot will generate a plot for each boundary found. If this option is turned off, BatchPlot will plot only the first element.

   Note: When creating a cell to be used as a boundary element, try using two Active Points (Place Active Point command). Create the cell. The area between the points will be used as the boundary cell.

4. Click OK to accept the modifications to the Plot Area specification properties.

Selecting Plot Area by Cell

Figure 7

Plot Layout Specifications (See Figure 8)
The Layout Specification Properties dialog box is used to determine the size and the position of each plot.

Selecting Plot Layout

Figure 8

1. In the BatchPlot dialog box, double-click Layout in the Specifications Controlling Plotting window.
2. The Layout Specifications Properties dialog box opens.
3. Select the method which defines the plot size from the Plot Size/Scale menu. Below is a brief description of each method:

   Method	Description
   Maximize	Makes plot size as large as possible given the paper size and orientation in the job set's Printer specification.
   Scale	Specify a scale factor that maps master units in the design file to physical units on the output media. The plot size is calculated from this scale and the size of the plot area.
   % of Maximum Size	Specify an integer between 10 and 100 inclusive to make each plot some percentage of its maximum size.
   X Size	Specify an explicit X size (width) for the plot. The Y size (height) is calculated from this scale and the plot area's aspect ratio.
   Y Size	Specify an explicit Y size (height) for the plot. The X size (width) is calculated from this scale and the plot area's aspect.

   Plot Size/Scale

4. From the Plot Origin menu select the type of origin. Below is a brief description of the two methods:

   Method	Description
   Center	Centers each plot to the output media.
   Manual Offset	Specifies an explicit X and Y offset for the plot relative to the media's lower left margin.

   Plot Origin

5. From the Units menu, select the units for the X Size and Y Size methods.
6. Click OK to accept the modifications to the Plot Layout specification properties.

Note: The Center origin option and the Maximize and % of Maximum size options are safe options, and will never cause print-time errors. Certain combinations of the other options, combined with a particular plot area's size or shape, may result in print-time errors. For example, consider a design file representing a map defined in terms of meters. A plot scale of 1 (meaning one master design unit maps to 1 mm or inch), will almost certainly result in a "plot size too large" error when used with that file. That same scale factor might work fine with a design file representing some small mechanical part.

Plot Display Specifications (See Figure 9)
The Display Specification dialog box controls the appearance of the plotted output. It lets you control the plotting equivalent of the MicroStation View attributes, along with Fence Boundary and Plot Border, or specify a pen table.

Selecting the Plot Display Settings

Figure 9

1. In the BatchPlot dialog box, double­click Display in the Specifications Controlling Plotting window.
2. These settings are comparable to those listed in the view attributes. Each option has three states which are listed below with a description.

   State	Description
   As-is	Use the setting that was saved in the design file.
   On	Force the setting on.
   Off	Force the setting off.

   To illustrate the benefits of these three-state options, consider a set of design files, each having a different combination of on/off view attribute settings for text nodes, constructions, and fill. Assume you want to plot all of these files with text nodes and constructions hidden, but you want to plot filled areas as they appear in the files (fill may be on in some files and off in others). To obtain the desired results, simply set the Text Nodes and Constructions options to Off, and set the Fill option (and all other options) to As-is. As BatchPlot opens each design file, it will turn text nodes and constructions off, but it will leave all other settings alone.

3. In the Pen Table field you may include a pen table name or click the Browse button to open the Select Pen Table File dialog box. Locate a pen table to resymbolize the plot and click OK.
4. Click OK to accept the modifications to the Plot Display specification properties.

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4. Starting the BatchPlot Process 

1. From the BatchPlot dialog box choose File > Print. (See Figure 10)
2. The Batch Print dialog box opens.

   The Batch Print dialog box

   Figure 10

3. Select the Print Range
   • All - Prints all files listed in the BatchPlot dialog box under Design Files to Plot.
   • Selection - Prints only the files from the list that have been selected by the user.

     If any design files in the main BatchPlot dialog box are selected, the Print Range defaults to Selection. If you want to print the entire set, click All.

4. By default BatchPlot keeps a log file of the batch plotting process. The default location for this log file is determined by the MS_PLTFILES variable. If you would like to change the location or name of the log file, type the information in the Filename field under Log File. The log file can be disabled by clearing the filename field, in which case the log will be displayed to the screen.

   You can append new log messages to the end of the existing log file by turning off the Clear Log File Before Printing option.

5. Click OK to start printing. A progress window opens, showing the name and sequence number of the file currently printing. (See figure 11) You can stop the print job by resetting. MicroStation will show the status of the BatchPlot when done.

   Batch Plot Progress Window

   Figure 11

6. The log file created by BatchPlot describes the processing that occurs during actual printing, including any errors.
7. Plotting Errors - When BatchPlot prints a set of design files, various specification-related errors may occur, including:
   • The saved view, shape element, or cell referenced by a plot area specification may not exist.
   • The shape element or cell referenced by a plot area specification may be perpendicular to the reference view, so it appears as a line in the view.
   • The plot size calculated from the plot area and the scale or size may exceed the size of the paper selected by the printer specification.
   • The plot origin specified by a layout specification, coupled with the plot size calculated from the plot area and the plot scale, may shift part of the plot area off the page.

Job Sets
A job set is an ordered list of design files to be plotted, along with references to the plot specifications that control how they are plotted. Job sets are stored in job set files (.job) with arbitrary names and locations. It lists all the master design files and the names of the specifications describing how they should be plotted. BatchPlot allows you to reassign the specifications assigned to a job set at any time, making it easy to plot variations of the set.

To save a job set, select File > Save from the BatchPlot dialog box. This will open the Save Job Set dialog box. Job Sets are saved with a .job extension.

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5. Managing Plot Specifications 

1. From the BatchPlot dialog box select Specifications > Manage.
2. The BatchPlot Specification Manager dialog box opens.
3. Select the appropriate Specification you would like to create, copy, rename or delete.

   Note: Whenever you create, rename, copy, or edit a plot specification, BatchPlot automatically assigns it to the current job set.

Batch Plot Specification Manager

Figure 12

To create a new specification of a particular type, select the type name, and click the New... button. A New Specification Name dialog opens. (The actual dialog box title depends on the selected specification type.) Type a name for the new specification, then click OK. A type-specific Specification Properties dialog box opens. (See Plot Specifications.) Change the desired settings, then click OK.

To rename a specification, select its type and name, then click the Rename... button. Type a new name into the Rename Specification dialog box and click OK.

To copy a specification, select its type and name, then click the Copy... button. Type a name for the copy in the New Specification Name dialog box and click OK. A type-specific Specification Properties dialog box opens. Change the desired settings, then click OK.

To delete a specification, select its type and name, then click the Delete button. You cannot delete the last specification of a particular type. BatchPlot requires that at least one specification of each type always exist.

To view or edit a specification's settings, select its type and name, then click the Properties... button. A Specification Properties dialog box opens. Review or modify the settings, then close the dialog box (by clicking OK if you changed any settings). You can also view or edit specifications selected for the currently opened job set directly from the main dialog by selecting their entries and clicking the Specification Properties icon there.

To close the Specification Manager dialog box click the X in the upper­right corner of the dialog box. When it unloads, BatchPlot automatically saves all specification changes.

Important Note:
Keep in mind that specifications are shared across job sets. If you edit a specification, your changes affect all job sets that reference it. If you delete or rename a specification used by another job set, BatchPlot will automatically select a new specification of the appropriate type the next time it opens that job set.

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6. BatchPlot Key-in Interface 

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7. Files and Directories 

BatchPlot stores all specifications in the file ${_USTN_WSMOD}default/data/batchplt.spc (default is <YOURDRIVE>\WIN32APP\USTATION\WSMOD\DEFAULT\DATA\BATCHPLT.SPC for MicroStation SE or <YOURDRIVE>\BENTLEY\WORKSPACE\SYSTEM\DATA\BATCHPLT.SPC for MicroStation/J). You can make BatchPlot use a different file by setting the configuration variable MS_BATCHPLT_SPECS to point to the desired file.

The user controls the names and locations of job set files. By default, job set files are saved in the directory specified by the configuration variable MS_PLTFILES.

The default BatchPlot log file (written to record the status of the actual printing process) is ${MS_PLTFILES}batchplt.log (default is <YOURDRIVE>\WIN32APP\USTATION\OUT\PLOT\BATCHPLT.LOG for MicroStation SE, <YOURDRIVE>\BENTLEY\WORKSPACE\PROJECTS\DEFAULT\OUT\BATCHPLT.LOG for MicroStation/J v7.00.XX.XX or <YOURDRIVE>\BENTLEY\WORKSPACE\PROJECTS\EXAMPLES\GENERIC\OUT\BATCHPLT.LOG for MicroStation/J v7.1).

Any time BatchPlot cannot find a design file using the path stored in the job set, it automatically searches for the file in the directories listed by the MS_BATCHPLT_DEF search path configuration variable. If MS_BATCHPLT_DEF is undefined, BatchPlot uses the standard MicroStation search path MS_DEF.

To make job sets more portable from machine to machine, you can also use the Edit Design File Paths to assign configuration variables to paths. If the design files listed in a job set are moved to a new location, use the Edit > Edit File Paths command in the BatchPlot dialog box to specify their new locations. (See Figure 13)

Edit Design File Paths

Figure 13

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