About the MicroStation link

The Meridian Enterprise application link for MicroStation provides the features of:

• Title block data exchange
• File property data exchange, including custom properties

• External reference management

The most important of these features are title block data exchange and external reference management because they can affect the integrity of your drawings. Some features, such as external reference management, are automatic and don’t require any action on your part.

Title block data exchange between MicroStation and Meridian Enterprise occurs by a link between Meridian Enterprise properties and MicroStation tagsets. If your drawing title blocks use tagsets for the title block text, that text can be synchronized with properties in a Meridian Enterprise vault. Normal MicroStation text cannot be linked with Meridian. Meridian Enterprise can support multiple title block standards simultaneously. Title block data exchange is configured by a system administrator. The MicroStation Link can also exchange property data between Meridian Enterprise and the file properties of drawings.

MicroStation reference management by Meridian Enterprise entails automatically detecting, tracking, and updating MicroStation references regardless of where the files may reside in a vault, including Local Workspace. This means that Meridian Enterprise can maintain the referential integrity of MicroStation references as you import drawings into a vault, move them, create revisions, and even exchange drawings with other parties using briefcases. When you open a drawing in MicroStation that has references , the MicroStation link finds the current location of the reference file in the vault and updates the location of the reference in the drawing. The link will even detect if the reference file has been renamed in the vault and resolve it correctly in MicroStation.

Together with the basic integration provided by Application Integration, any file created or used by MicroStation can be managed in a Meridian Enterprise vault. Conversely, MicroStation commands that request a file can access Meridian Enterprise vaults for document selection.

Notes

• The functionality provided in MicroStation by Application Integration is subject to the general limitations of Application Integration described in About Application Integration. For example, if the current drawing in MicroStation was opened from a work area, using Application Integration to select a reference file or image to place in the drawing is limited to the context (Main area or work area) where the drawing was opened from.
• To enable Application Integration in the MicroStation file dialog boxes, MicroStation must be configured to use the Windows versions of these dialog boxes as described in the MicroStation documentation.

The commands for using the MicroStation link features can be found on the BlueCielo menu in MicroStation. Some commands are also available within the PowerUser application. The following topics describe each feature.