MicroStation Tip: Backup and Undo

September 30, 2013

Written by Bob Mecham

Ever make a mistake? Who hasn’t, save yourself some grief.

Backup

Keyin: backup

By keying in the word ‘backup’ MicroStation creates a duplicate copy of you file. To control where the file is saved, use the configuration variable MS_BACKUP. If MS_BACKUP is not defined the file is saved in the current directory with a “.bak” extension. Try it out. Better yet, set a function key to do it for you.
The variable may look something like: MS_BACKUP=C:/TEMP/DGN

Undo

Did you know you can set ‘marks’ in MicroStation? Try Edit>Set Mark. Do some work and set another mark. Now you can Edit>Undo Other>To Mark to step back through your design file. Think of them as ‘groups of undos’.
Need to get your MicroStation file back to how it was when you first logged in? Edit>Undo Other>All.
When placing a linestring and you place a vertex in a wrong location. Don’t reset out of the place smartline command, just hit the Undo icon and watch the individual vertex locations get undone.

Last Month’s MicroStation Tip: Activate Reference for Editing

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One comment on “MicroStation Tip: Backup and Undo”

Corné van Zunderd Reply 10/31/2013 4:33am

Backup is a musthave, a few years back I found an macro, that still works fine. Maybe it’s something te share.
‘ MS_BACKUP must be defined
‘ BACKUP_TIME must be defined in minutes

‘ Use the backup key-in with the Runmacro MDL application.
‘ Steps:
‘ 1. Create or record a macro that creates a backup by key-in
‘ 2. Make sure macro is placed in MS_MACRO folder (default = …BentleyWorkspaceStandardsmacros)
‘ Here the example syntax for a macro that will create a backup:

Sub main

MbeSendKeyin “backup”
End Sub

‘ 3. Set configuration variable MS_DGNAPPS to value: …Bentleyprogrammicrostationmdlappsrunmacro.ma
‘ 4. Set the configuration variable MS_DGNMACROS to value:

‘ This will create a backup of each file when it is opened. I’m not sure how to do this when the file is closed.