Questions similar to this appear on the Bentley Discussion Groups. Rudi Wells (Bentley Systems Europe) responded with a tip on the general discussion group.
Q Whenever I create a new project in the MicroStation Manager window, I want MicroStation to create automatically new subfolders that I specify.
A MicroStation includes some hidden configuration variables (CfgVars) that can help …
_USTN_DISPLAYALLCFGVARS=1# Show hidden CfgVars_USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS# Contains the list of subdirectories automatically created for a new project
CfgVar _USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS is defined in the msdirs.cfg configuration file,
installed in the Bentley\Program\MicroStation\config\system folder.
Each folder is appended to the directory defined by $(_USTN_PROJECT)/<project name>
and then created. Sub directories are allowed, e.g. _USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS > dgn/2d.
In order to have your own company standard folder structure used when you do a Project|New in Microstation Manager here is what you can do.
- Show all the hidden variables by creating the variable
_USTN_DISPLAYALLCFGVARS=1 - Restart MicroStation
- Find the variable
_USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS. This contains the list of subdirectories automatically created for a new project - Edit it to suit with a list of folder names separated by a semi-colon
For example I will add a docs and an image folder.
You either append your folders to the existing variable …
_USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS > docs _USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS > image
Or you can specify a list of folder names explicitly, separating each name with a semi-colon …
_USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS = cell;data;dgn;out;seed;symb;dgnlib;docs;images
You can also instruct MicroStation to create sub-folders. To have a sub folder of a project subfolder, you can do the following …
_USTN_PROJECTSUBDIRS = cell;data;dgn;out;seed;symb;dgnlib\test;dgnlib\test1;dgnlib\test2;dgnlib\test3
You will get the following folders created …
LA Solutions' ProjectBuilder
Another tool to help administer project creation is ProjectBuilder™. ProjectBuilder lets you design a folder structure (or clone an existing structure). You can also specify files to be copied to a new project. Then, on the click of a button, replicate the project structure to a new location. Specified files (e.g. seed files, DGNLIB files, cell libraries) are copied to the new project.
