GREENBOOK GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT. ProjectWise Integration Server GEOPAK Civil Collaboration. communities.bentley.

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1 GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT ProjectWise Integration Server GEOPAK Civil Collaboration communities.bentley.com

2 First Edition (May 2010) Applies to: ProjectWise V8 XM Edition and GEOPAK Disclaimer: The following information contains extracts, data, application examples, installations and configurations that are believed to be accurate at the time of their publication. Bentley Professional Services is constantly updating the technical details which are subject to revisions. Bentley Professional Services strives to present the information in an accurate manner, but does not guarantee its completeness or validity. The material provided in this guide is advisory only and the use is completely voluntary. Bentley Professional Services makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in connection with this information. Any use or application of this information will be at the user s sole risk and responsibility. Bentley will not be responsible for any loss, claims or damages arising out of the use or application of this information.

3 GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION TO ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) DOCUMENT OVERVIEW TECHNICAL CONTENT GEOPAK USER SETUP GEOPAK PROJECT SETUP DEALING WITH COGO (GPK) FILES LAUNCHING GEOPAK ADVANCED SYNTAX IN INPUT FILES AND CRITERIA FILES STANDARD PREFERENCE FILES AUTOMATIC FILE ACCESS PLAN AND PROFILE GENERATOR REFERENCE & RELATED MATERIALS GLOSSARY... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.

4 GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT SECTION 2.0: ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) 1.0 Introduction to GreenBooks are created by Bentley Professional Services to provide Best Practices as it relates to utilizing software solutions for the infrastructure lifecycle. This not only includes Bentley software, but others that are commonly used in infrastructure projects. The guides rely on the hundreds of Bentley Professional Services colleagues around the world in documenting best practices that have made our customers more efficient in their use of infrastructure software. GreenBooks can take on various formats from a quick TechNote, How to Guide, Instructional Manual, White Paper, to a full Book format. All GreenBooks are provided in PDF format for downloading and printing. Because these are continually being updated with new information, always check online for the latest revision. GreenBooks are often published in a Draft state first. This allows for earlier access to potentially valuable information. Because of this fact, draft documents are sometimes less polished and could contain errors that a more extensive and time consuming review process would discover. Bentley s Be Communities is utilized as the delivery system to allow any Be Community member to download and utilize best practices in their industry. Membership in the Be Community is free. To sign up, visit To find this GreenBook and others, visit

5 GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT SECTION 2.0: ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) 2.0 About the Author(s) Adrian Crowfoot, P.E. is a Bentley Professional Services ProjectWise Consultant and has a Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering degree from Texas Tech University. He has been involved in Civil Engineering since 1997, where he experienced a wide variety of transportation design projects. He has demonstrated an innovative approach to street, highway, and airport design by tackling various civil design tools. Mr. Crowfoot gradually migrated to managing design application including ProjectWise, MicroStation, and GEOPAK prior to joining the Bentley Professional Services ProjectWise North America Team in Bobby Mullenax is a Senior Consultant who has been working in CAD Management, Document Management, and Civil Engineering Design since Mr. Mullenax joined Bentley in 2007 and has been responsible for system architecture designs, software implementations, technical support, training development and delivery of services for Platform and Civil software solutions. Products include ProjectWise, InterPlot, Geospatial solutions, MicroStation, InRoads and GEOPAK. Mr. Mullenax has extensive knowledge in other industry software solutions, both in the Geo and Civil disciplines. He is currently part of Bentley Professional Services ProjectWise Team in North America.

6 GEOPAK IN A PROJECTWISE ENVIRONMENT SECTION 3.0: DOCUMENT OVERVIEW 3.0 Document Overview GEOPAK over the years has provided challenges to a user s workflow when using ProjectWise. It was first integrated with ProjectWise in the 2004 Edition. This integration allowed for many of the project related files to be downloaded from ProjectWise. Many of the dialog boxes then contained ProjectWise access points. It still provided a workflow challenge as it relates to: GPK File Project Manager File Input File Runs and Cross Section Creation Plan and Profile Sheet Creation Random Occurrences of the Wrong ProjectWise Dialog Box Appearing (for instance, the Save dialog would come up when the Open DTM command was issued) Another version (8.8) of Geopak came out in February 2008 and was still called GEOPAK V Edition. If the user didn t use ProjectWise, no changes were detected. However, the main update was that all the ProjectWise dialog hooks were repaired. Additionally, input files, output files, and project manager files could finally be stored in ProjectWise. The Plan and Profile generator finally generated sheets inside ProjectWise. In conclusion, GEOPAK 8.8 and above can be used in conjunction with ProjectWise V8 XM, V8i and V8i (SELECTseries 1) ( or higher). The only file type that is not integrated with ProjectWise is the GPK file type. The reason for the external GPK file is that the GPK is a multi-access database. Bits of the GPK are locked and released as users make add, remove and update COGO elements. ProjectWise only does file based locks and unlocks (Check Outs and Check Ins). Therefore, the two are not compatible. Methods for dealing with the GPK file will be presented later in this document.

7 4.0 Technical Content TBD 4.1 GEOPAK User Setup By using configuration variables, the paths in the GEOPAK User Preferences will only need to be set up once per user and can change dynamically from project to project. Follow these steps to set up the User Preferences: 1. In MicroStation, select Applications>GEOPAK Road>User Preferences. 2. Set the working directory if desired to $(_GPK_PWDATA) Location of DGN files such as XSEC, PAVE, etc. (Leaving it blank will ensure that the working directory is always the directory of the currently opened DGN file.) 3. Click the COGO Preferences button in the User Preferences dialog box.

8 4. Set the directories as follows in the COGO Preferences dialog box. $(_GPK_DATA) $(_GPK_DATA_INPUT) $(_GPK_DATA_OUPUT) 5. When you switch projects, you will already have the correct settings. You can distribute the settings by distributing gprefer.rsc.

9 4.2 GEOPAK Project Setup 1. Launch 2. Expand under to show the Managed configuration blocks. ProjectWise 3. Right-click the Project Configuration Block and select Properties. 4. Edit/add the following variables to populate the COGO Preferences correctly: Variable Name Description Type Example _GPK_PWDATA Location of Geopak Data Inside ProjectWise (In PW V8i and above, you can use the DMS_PROJECT variable to make a dynamic CFG block) ProjectWise Path; String pw:\...\{project ID}\Geopak\ $(DMS_PROJECT(_DGNDIR))Geopak\ _GPK_DATA Location of GPK Files Outside ProjectWise String P:\$(_USTN_PROJECTNAME)\Geopak/ _GPK_INPUT Location of Geopak Data Input Files String $(_GPK_DATA)Input\ _GPK_OUTPUT Location of Geopak Data Output Files String $(_GPK_DATA)Output\

10 4.3 Dealing with COGO (GPK) Files It is best practice to leave the GPK file outside ProjectWise on the server,. As stated before, the GPK file is a multi-access file that is locked and unlocked on a bit level. Since ProjectWise can only lock/unlock on a file level, the GPK file needs to be kept outside ProjectWise. The GPK file may be imported into ProjectWise prior to submittals so that all project files are inside ProjectWise. However, a user may choose to place the GPK inside of PW. In this scenario, since the GPK is not integrated with ProjectWise, the user is responsible for manually checking/copying the file out and then checking it back in when required. 4.4 Launching GEOPAK GEOPAK will be launched in the same manner as outside of ProjectWise. By default, GEOPAK is launched when MicroStation is launched either from the desktop or from a file opened from ProjectWise Explorer. GEOPAK may be manually launched from the Application Menu via the GEOPAK Startup Configuration variables (see the GEOPAK Readme file).

11 4.5 Advanced Syntax in Input Files and Criteria Files GEOPAK supports several ASCII Input Files. Examples of these include the Proposed Cross Section input file, Earthworks input file and the Superelevation Shapes input file. Each of these files contains syntax to allow the user to specify file names. When running inside of a ProjectWise environment, the user should use the PW: prefix in order to let GEOPAK know that the file is located inside of ProjectWise. Below is a sample of a Proposed Cross Section input file. Shape dgn = pw:\projects\route\us31\shapes.dgn. XS dgn = pw:\projects\route\us31\xs.dgn. Pattern dgn = pw:\projects\route\us31\working.dgn Criteria for Shape Cluster side slope LT include pw:\projects\route\us31\criteria\variables.x include pw:\projects\route\us31\criteria\pavement.x include pw:\projects\route\us31\criteria\shoulder.x include pw:\projects\route\us31\criteria\slopes.x When the input file is run, GEOPAK will read the input file and automatically go and acquire all the required files from ProjectWise. The application will make the best decision possible as to whether check the file out or just copy it out. For example, in the case of Proposed Cross Sections the cross section design file would be checked out, while the shapes, pattern and criteria files would only be copied out. Note: GEOPAK can only reference the datasource of the active session of MicroStation. The pw:\ prefix represents the Documents container in the datasource.

12 4.6 Standard Preference Files Standard preference files for GEOPAK may be stored in ProjectWise. GEOPAK recognizes the pw:\ prefix in configuration files (MicroStation does not). However, it is better practice to use a Managed Workspace to deliver the standard preference files so that all users are configured to access the GEOPAK Standards. It is also worthy to note that MicroStation can only point to ProjectWise documents via configuration variables set in a Managed Workspace. Managed Workspaces are created using Configuration Settings Blocks (CSBs) in ProjectWise Administrator. The CSBs are applied to folders, projects and documents in ProjectWise Explorer and applied to Users, Groups, Access Lists, Applications and the Datasource in ProjectWise Administrator. See the ProjectWise Administrator help file for more details. An example of a standard preference file and its corresponding configuration variable include: D&C Manager Database (DDB): GPK_ACBOOK_DDBFILE = pw:\standards\mydatabase.ddb

13 4.7 Automatic File Access As described in the previous section, GEOPAK accesses files in ProjectWise automatically when needed. GEOPAK will determine whether the file should be checked out or copied out. Examples of files that are automatically copied out include criteria files, TIN files, shape files, pattern files, and reference files for sheet generation. Examples of files that are automatically checked out include Project Manager supporting files such as runs, the cross-section design file, and sheet files when generating sheets. As a rule of thumb, GEOPAK does not check in files to ProjectWise. The only exception to this rule is the Plan Profile Sheet Generator which will be discussed later. The user is responsible for updating the server copy or checking in files. The ProjectWise Organizer is made available from MicroStation in order to help facilitate this workflow. The ProjectWise Organizer command will appear on the Applications menu only if ProjectWise is integrated. It is the same tool as provided in the ProjectWise Explorer and has the same functionality. It displays a list of all files checked or copied out. The user may perform such operations as update server copy, check in or free on the files in the list.

14 To remind users to deal with the checked out files, the following ProjectWise user setting should be set in the Interface section: By selecting the Show always option, the user will be shown the Local Document Organizer when exiting MicroStation and when logging out of the datasource in ProjectWise Explorer. Showing the Local Document Organizer will not force the user to check in the files, but will simply let the user know which files are checked out or exported. Again, it is the responsibility of the user to deal with checked out files.

15 5.0 Plan and Profile Generator We cover the Plan and Profile Generator application separately because it functions slightly differently from other applications and is tightly integrated with ProjectWise in several ways. First, all sheet files and plot sets will be created directly in ProjectWise and checked in automatically for the user. All required files such as the motif file and border reference file can be selected from ProjectWise directly. As stated earlier, all file names displayed in text fields on dialogs will display the PW:\ prefix if the files were selected from ProjectWise. This allows the user to save a preference with those paths, and the application will automatically check or copy the files out of ProjectWise as needed. One caveat when using Plan and Profile Generator all files should reside either inside or outside of ProjectWise and not mixed and matched. For example, if your clipping files reside in ProjectWise, then your motif file or reference border file must reside in ProjectWise also.

16 6.0 Reference & Related Materials More information regarding GEOPAK and ProjectWise may be found in the ProjectWise section of the GEOPAK Readme file.