Maintaining Reproducibility

Thanks to Casey for these comments:

We need to be able to recreate exhibits and reports, easily, quickly and accurately.

An example of a problem I've seen is that some exhibits are just the border sheets. They are referencing the master files that have changed and hence, you cannot recreate the exhibit.

Please, at a minimum, save a PDF of the exhibit or report. This will allow the document to be recreated without any possibility of something changing.

Secondly, there are a few ways you can back up MicroStation files. Any files that you are referencing into your exhibit, should also be copied into the exhibits folder and the path should be pointing there, not the master files folder. Existing files such as the topo and culture files which are large and maybe don't need to be in 20 locations, are up for discussion. (Jeff's Note: Using Relative Path Referencing as opposed to Absolute Path Referencing makes projects more "Portable."  This is something that should be setup in the configuration, but is on the back burner).

However, you can also do a "fence file" in micro station and it essentially merges all of the data into one new file. This allows for the graphic to be recreated, but doesn't make it quick to "jump back" to that scenario and continue your design from there.

Jeff Martin mentioned that there is a tool in Microstation called Utilities Packager and it may be useful for saving all of the files you need, plus symbology settings, etc. If anyone wants to look further into this, please feel free.

If you are concerned about folder sizes, we can back things up on DVD's and take them off the network whenever necessary and probably should do this with exhibits regularly. We'd rather have more information than necessary, than missing information.

Please use your judgment, but keep these ideas and issues in mind.

Thanks for your time and let me know if you have any questions or comments!