BoM: Advanced Features

Introduction

BoM™ CONNECT Edition is an AddIn or App that adds functionality to Bentley Systems MicroStation^® CONNECT. It's a tool for architects, engineers, planners and technicians.

BoM facilitates annotatation of elements

See the Getting Started page for a quick introduction to BoM tools.

Advanced use of BoM

BoM CONNECT Edition exists primarily to help you annotate DGN BoM features. By BoM feature, we mean any MicroStation DGN element.

BoM Properties

Each BoM feature should have an ID, which makes it simple to identify in reports and tables. BoM tags an BoM feature with further information stored as Item properties. Further information includes …

ID
Part No.
Part Description

Derived Properties

Some properties you can't change. For example, the moniker and drawing are read-only properties that have an Expression. You can display those values, but you can't change them.

BoM's Settings dialog provides toggle buttons that let you includes or omit the Part Number and Part Description values in a text label.

BoM Part Number

BoM's Part Number tag is a text value that you can assign when you tag an object. The object's purpose is arbitrary: you can assign any value you want. Part Number can appear in a report or table. You might want to use Part Number for collating or sorting tables.

For example, if you are creating a bill of materials, …

You might create a Report that you export to, say, Excel. In Excel you can perform calculations using the above Part Number values.

They key-in to update the Part Number on multiple elements simultaneously is
BOM TAG PROPERTY property-name, new-value
Where new-value is one of the acceptable values for this property.

For example, suppose that you have place a fence around a number of DGN elements that represent widgets. You can re-label those widgets in one shot with the key-in …
BOM TAG PROPERTY partnum, B23

This command will operate on a single element — just pick an element in the usual way. It's more useful, however, when tagging multiple elements in a selection set or fence.

See the BoM commands page for information about a specific command.

BoM Part Description

BoM's Part Description tag is a text value that you can assign when you tag an object.

You might create a Report that you export to, say, Excel. In Excel you can perform calculations using the above Part Description values.

They key-in to update the Part Description on multiple elements simultaneously is
BOM TAG PROPERTY Part Description.



This command will operate on a single element — just pick an element in the usual way.
It's more useful, however, when tagging multiple elements in a selection set or fence.


See the BoM commands page for information about a specific command.



Choose Your Preferred Labelling Method

BoM provides two ways to label a BoM feature …



	 A text node element



	 A template cell


See the
Annotator Labels page for more information about label types.



Pick Lists

Pick Lists, also known as Value Lists, are a list of pre-defined values that may be assigned to a property.
For example, Pick Lists are used by  BoM for properties …



Custom Pick Lists

If you don't want the Pick Lists provided by LA Solutions, you can supply your own.
See the PickList
topic in MicroStation Help.



Creating Named Groups

BoM lets you create a MicroStation Named Group from DGN elements having common property values.
Elements in a  Named Group can be manipulated in various ways.



For example, you may have several rooms tagged with Item property Office.
BoM's group command pops a dialog where you can choose to add rooms with that property
to a Named Group.


Named Groups that you create with  BoM appear in MicroStation's Named Groups dialog.
Each Named Group can be manipulated using MicroStation's tools.
For example, you can highlight a Named Group to locate its members more easily.
The following screenshot shows MicroStation's Named Groups dialog with some
Named Groups created by BoM …




Tagging Multiple Elements

BoM lets you tag multiple elements.
In order of preference, the elements can be …


	 Defined by a MicroStation fence
	
 In a user-defined selection set
	
 On a named level


If a fence is defined, then those elements within the fence will be tagged.
If a fence is not defined but a selection set is active, then those elements in the selection set will be tagged.
If neither a fence is defined nor a selection set is active then the tool will find elements on a specified level.



The key-in to annotate multiple elements simultaneously is:

BOM TAG MULTI



Choose a valid level name and set the initial
ID, Auto-Increment, Purpose, Justification and Part Number values.
Press the Execute button.
BoM searches for valid elements on the named level, then tags and labels each one.


See the BoM Alignment page for information about justification.


See the BoM commands page for information about a specific command.



Return to the BoM main page

Return to the BoM main page.