One of Mark's prior students asked for his help with something he was working on.  As a note - The initial answer was lengthy and he ended up asking Mark additional questions as he went through the process. For these reasons I divided this tip into two parts (Footsteps 33 & 34). 

The following is the first of the two parts:

Hi Mark,

I know we went over all this stuff but I'm confused. I was given a survey using InRoads on AutoCAD. I open that drawing in MicroStation and saved that DWG to a DGN and put in a horizontal and vertical alignment. I am trying to run the plan and profile generator and nothing works.  I am assuming because the files I am working with all have different master units (inches, feet, US survey foot).

1. Should we be importing a survey with the open DGN being 3D_Model_Seed.dgn then saving as something else?
2. Should I run plan and profile generator with a different Seed.dgn?
3. What should the host file be (anything I want)?
4. Do you have a reference file for plan and profile generator?  If not I may need a step by step over the phone.

I have been trying different ways to see what works / doesn't work.  I am not sure what DGN to start with (a clean one, one of the seeds or something else).

I hate having training and then not using the software for 9 months.

Help?

- Mr. A  

Here is the Zen Dude's response:

Dear Mr. A,

First a couple comments related to your questions:

1)  The PPG is really sensitive to units, especially the Border

2)  The units have to be set right at the start and there may have been something lost in the translation from DWG to DGN

3)  The Host file is the name that you give your new file that will be created

4)  I hate when I train guys and they don't use the software for 9 months! ; )

Hmm . . . okay. I just tried it and worked fine. But I used some settings that I had set up during our training last summer.

Here's what I did: (We can discuss any steps that either aren't clear, or are different than you expect to work. I would suggest scanning though this information below before trying it again).

2) I went into that file and viewed the Horizontal alignment and stationed it just for some display.

3) Then I created another New DGN file in MicroStation from the 3D_Model_Seed.dgn and called itZen_Test1_Profs.dgn. I planned to view the profiles in this drawing. I understand that you might not do it exactly this way, but this is what I first did just to see if it would work.

4) Now that I'm in this file that will eventually contain the PPG profile display, I opened the PPG tool and set it up (this is what it looked like after I ran the PPG tool).

5) Here are the settings that I used. I pretty much used the setting straight from the Preference. I loaded the Typical Streets Preference for the lack of knowing exactly what this street was.

6) Main tab - I didn't do anything on this tab except verify that the numbers looked correct.

a.   Method set to Plan and Profile

b.   Correct Horizontal Alignment

c.   Correct Start and Stop Station Limits

d.   Correct Length per sheet

7) On the Plan Controls tab I verified the setting there and added the horizontal alignment DGN as a ModelFile (Model Files are any X-refs or References).

8) On the Profile Controls tab all I did was scan the settings and define the Vertical Alignment.

9) On the Sheet Layout tab I did the following:

a.  Browse to the folder for your new sheets, and type in the name of the first Plan & Profile Sheet file (DGN) that you want to create. This file, or files don't exist yet, but will be created by the PPG tool.

b.  Browse to the folder that your Seed file is in and select it from your standards area. This is a file that already exists; you are just selecting it.

10) Just verify the settings on the View Layout tab.

11) Just make sure that your Border file is correctly selected on the Border and Title tab.

12) I didn't do anything on the Symbols and Details tab, but you could specify a North Arrow if you wanted to. But this isn't the reason why yours isn't working.

13) I didn't do anything on the Match Lines tab either.

14) Now go to the Sheet Index tab and click Apply. This is where the 'magic' should happen.

15) After you click Apply, you will be prompted to > Identify Location which is the lower left corner of the collection of Profile pieces that will be used during the construction of the new Plan & Profile sheets.

16) Once that data point is placed the Profiles will be created in that DGN and then the individual sheets will be created. The sheets will go flicking by as each one is created.

17) Eventually, when it's done, it will stop on the last sheet and the Sheet Index will be filled in with each sheet.

18) Now you should be able to select a sheet from the Sheet Index and click Show Sheet to jump into that sheet.

19) If you open the Profs.DGN file where the Profiles are, you can go to View Vertical Annotation and display the vertical geometry.

20) Now jumping back to one of the sheet drawings will show this Vertical Annotation.

21) Then Save the VDF File that contains all of the sheet configuration in case you need to go back and tweak something on the sheets.

Give it a go . . .

Civilly yours,  

-zen