Introduction
| DGN Chronographer™ is a tool developed by LA Solutions for Bentley Systems' MicroStation®. It helps you to manage and visualise changes in your CAD drawings. |
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When you create or modify an element in a MicroStation DGN model, MicroStation applies a time stamp. The element time stamp contains the current date and time, obtained from your computer's clock. You can see the last modified date in MicroStation's Element Information dialog. MicroStation's Design History makes use of that time stamp.
DGN Chronographer provides a means to sort and filter elements chronologically. That is, it compares an element's time stamp with a given date or time, then builds a list of elements sorted by the time stamp. It collects elements, applying your chronological filter to each element. You choose what element history is interesting by setting that filter. You instruct DGN Chronographer what action to take with its collection. For example, you can add each element to a MicroStation Named Group or selection set. You can cause each element to be resymbolised (displayed in new symbology, such as a distinct colour). You can write a list of elements to an external file to be analysed elsewhere.
Tools & Features
DGN Chronographer provides various ways of selecting elements by last modified date. The user interface lets you create a chronological filter to find …
- Elements modified in a recent period (yesterday, last week, last month)
- Elements modified before a specified date
- Elements modified between two dates
- Elements modified after a specified date
Once you've chosen a filter, the Scan button instructs DGN Chronographer to look through your DGN model and examine's each element's time stamp. If the time stamp passes the filter, then what happens next depends on your Action setting. If the specified Action is …
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Create selection set | Each element is added to MicroStation's selection set |
| Create Named Group | Each element is added to a MicroStation Named Group |
| Resymbolise | Each element's appearance is changed to your requirements; the change may be temporary or permanent |
| Text Report | Details of each element are written to an XML file |
| DGN Report | A copy of each element is written to a new DGN file |
DGN Chronographer works with MicroStation V8i and later.
Request DGN Chronographer
You can request DGN Chronographer for evaluation. You must purchase one or more licenses for production use. Click the relevant DGN Chronographer version link for the version of MicroStation that you are using …
After you click one of the above links, you will see a form that you should complete with your contact details. When you have completed the form, you will be redirected to another web page. You can then download a ZIP file containing the DGN Chronographer MDL application for MicroStation.
MicroStation Design History
MicroStation includes Design History (DH) functionality. Design History lets you create waymarks in your DGN file that store the state of the file at a given time. DGN Chronographer is not a substitute for DH: it's purely a reporting tool.
