Keyboard shortcuts are another way of quickly accessing specific ribbon groups or tools. Based on the specific keys assigned, different tools, ribbon group pop-ups or pop-up menus display. These keys are the shortcuts to access the respective tools.

For example, the <Space> key invokes the default ribbon group pop-up which contains further shortcuts for different ribbon groups and tools. Some other examples of keyboard shortcuts are <Q> and <I> (mentioned in the previous blog) which open the quick tools menu. Some shortcuts have child shortcuts which invoke further tools. Like W, the keyboard shortcut for AccuDraw has child shortcuts A, C, E and so on for different AccuDraw rotations.

You can view the complete list of keyboard shortcuts in the view window by pressing F7. (See image below)

You can use the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog (File>Settings>User>Keyboard Shortcuts) to create and manage keyboard shortcuts. (See image below)

Existing keyboard shortcuts can be modified or deleted, and new keyboard shortcuts can be created in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog. Changes to keyboard shortcuts are saved on an XML file. If you want to configure custom keyboard shortcuts and distribute across a team, then you can do so by configuring them on one machine and then copying the file to other machines.

In the previous blog on Designing a Ribbon Group Pop-up, we learnt how to create and assign a new keyboard shortcut to the newly created pop-up group. We will now see how we can edit an existing keyboard shortcut.

In the existing list of keyboard shortcuts let us change the shortcut Q for quick tools to J and add a child keyboard shortcut to it for Move Parallel tool.

1. Open the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog (File>Settings>User>Keyboard Shortcuts).
2. Double-click on ‘Q’ in the Key column and rename it to ‘J’.
3. Press <Enter>.

   The shortcut changes to J.

4. Now click the ‘+’ sign next to J.

5. List of child shortcuts associated with Quick tools is displayed.

   We will add the Move Parallel tool to this list.

6. Select the Add Child icon.
   
7. In the Key column, enter the shortcut key ‘P’.
8. In the Label column enter Move Parallel.
9. In the Key-in column enter the key-in ‘move parallel offset’ and press <Enter>.
10. Click Apply.
    The new child shortcut P is added for the tool Move Parallel. You can now test the new shortcuts. Watch the video below:
    communities.bentley.com/.../Video_2D00_Editing-existing-shortcut.mp4

Similarly, you can customize any of the existing keyboard shortcuts.

To remove an existing shortcut, select the keyboard shortcut and click delete in the dialog or right-click on the keyboard shortcut and select delete from the pop-up menu.

Hevacomp Energy Assessor (Non-dwelling) Level 3 & 4 (SBEM)

Allows Hevacomp users - via an accredited Energy Assessor scheme provider - to work towards Energy Assessor status to show competency in production of EPC's using an approved SBEM interface. This works towards the Hevacomp Software Competency Exam, accepted by CIBSE and Stroma.

Energy Assessor course and examination will be held in our London office. Now open for registration via links below.

Thank you to all who attending our SIG webinar: Using Blocks in gINT.

We have posted a video of the SIG webinar on our Bentley learn site and it is available here.  You do have to have a Bentley profile to access the video. If you do not have one you can create one free of charge when prompted after clicking on the link.

Displaying a road or aerial map as a background is a powerful way to visualize your hydraulic model and put things into context. Did you know that Bentley's Haestad products have a Bing Maps feature that enables you to quickly and easily connect to aerial and road maps and align them to a model with up to three control points? This powerful and easy to use feature is available starting with CONNECT Edition Update 1. Watch this short video to see how this feature is used.

Applicable Products: WaterGEMS, WaterCAD, HAMMER, SewerGEMS, SewerCAD, StormCAD, CivilStorm CONNECT Edition Update 1 (10.01.00.XX).

To learn more, check out the additional resources in the "See Also" section below.

https://youtu.be/Tn47UAqeMoo

Want to see more? Sign in, click the More button and turn blog notifications on. Or, subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

This video is part of a growing library of useful information designed to provide effective tips and information about time-saving product features within Bentley’s Haestad | Hydraulics and Hydrology products. Be sure to check back frequently to view the latest video. Better yet, subscribe to this blog by turning Notifications On.

Craig Calvin
Product Engineer
Bentley Systems, Inc.

See Also

How to add background aerial and road map images to your model

The Bentley Institute Student Ambassador Program encourages young engineers who are resourceful, communicative, and passionate about technology to hone their skills and promote new trends in the industry among their peers. They find the most effective way to reach out to their fellow classmates, to plan and organize activities which keep students engaged and interested in advancing their knowledge of the infrastructure industries. Student Ambassadors’ contributions add value to academic courses on their home campus, by facilitating a bridge over the gap between academic learning and the technology skills needed by industry.

Maneesh Thakur, from Jawaharlal Nehru Government Engineering College, Sundernagar in India, was recommended by professors to become a Student Ambassador for his campus. Maneesh had good leadership skills to undertake the responsibilities of guiding and assisting his peers in becoming proficient in the use of Bentley software while also documenting and communicating any opportunities, requests, or challenges. 

A third-year student of the Civil Engineering program, when appointed as a Bentley Institute Student Ambassador in 2016, Maneesh organized a group of students on his campus who were interested in learning and using Bentley’s software. To be more organized, he also created an email ID specifically for Bentley-related academic queries and requests from students on his campus, which he moderates and responds to.

Soon after his appointment, he oriented students regarding Bentley’s Academic Program and helped them to create their individual accounts on STUDENTserver, so they could access the comprehensive suite of software and begin accessing OnDemand training to build their learning transcripts (a great advantage when they are seeking jobs).

Starting in January 2017, Maneesh promoted virtual sessions for students to acquaint themselves with STAAD.Pro and ContextCapture and encouraged them to submit their projects to the 2017 Bentley Institute Student Design Competition; his support resulted in a good number of entries from his campus.

In September 2017, Maneesh again offered an orientation session for nearly 150 students on his campus to increase awareness of the resources available to them via Bentley’s Academic Program, guiding them to create their accounts on the STUDENTserver and showing them how to download software for their use. In November, he organized and promoted a Student Design Competition especially for students on his campus, with the support of his professors and Bentley Institute’s Academic team. For the contest, students designed and performed a structural analysis of a G+4 Commercial Building using STAAD.Pro. The 50 participating students were able to apply their academic knowledge and improve their project via use of technology, increasing their overall interest in structural engineering! The best projects were chosen by the Faculty Ambassadors of the institute, and participation certificates were provided to all.

Being a proactive Student Ambassador, Maneesh always makes sure that fellow students on his campus are regularly updated about the latest technology and offerings from Bentley; he is also constantly lending a helping hand to organize and support any engagement activity for the Institute. A regular series of activities on his campus was a result of the consistent efforts from Maneesh’s side to understand and network with his peers according to their requirements and the support and benefits extended by Bentley Institute.

Maneesh said that the Student Ambassador Program offers him opportunities to learn and grow as an individual, and he feels sure that this experience will help him to become a successful infrastructure professional in the future. For example, his role as a Bentley Institute Student Ambassador has helped Maneesh develop his public speaking skills, so he is now confident speaking in front of a large crowd. Guiding his fellow peers, Maneesh always encourages them to grab every opportunity that comes their way and to put in their best efforts to achieve the desired goals.

We would like to thank Maneesh for his contributions as a Bentley Institute Student Ambassador on his campus. We are confident that he is up for any challenge that his career in the future holds for him! 

Introduction

In MicroStation, there are three commonly known ways to access tools: from the ribbon at the top, from ribbon group pop-ups, which are in-place at the cursor position, or using keyboard shortcuts. There is one more relatively uncommon but very interesting way to access tools, that is screen menus. Let us learn to create and use them in this blog series.

Using screen menus, you can build your own UI layout and access tools from it. Screen menus provide many advantages over the regular UI:

• Fully customizable free-form UI – The screen menu UI can be designed in any way you want.
• Easy to build and use – Being based on saved views, screen menus are easy to create and update. Also, using screen menus is easier as they can be activated using keyboard shortcuts or always displayed in a separate view window.
• Hierarchical menus – You can have levels of sub menus in the screen menu.
• Context sensitive – You can control the display of tools depending of rules created via visibility expressions.
• Display style support – This helps in highlighting the tools.
• 3D - Supports 3D objects.

If you work primarily on a limited set of tools and desire more screen space for working on your designs, screen menus can be very useful for you. You can create screen menus consisting of your frequently used tools and minimize the ribbon. The screen menu can be popped up with a keyboard shortcut or kept active at one corner of the view, thereby freeing the space occupied by the ribbon and increasing the design space. Screen menus can also be very useful when you mostly use a limited set of tools and need more design space.

The following video shows few screen menu samples.

communities.bentley.com/.../Video_2D00_1_2D00_1.mp4

In the next blog, you will learn to create a simple screen menu.

Hevacomp Mechanical Designer course now open for registration.

This instructor-led, classroom-based course will cover all major mechanical design programs within Hevacomp, including:

• Design Database
• CAD Input
• Load Calculations
• Netsys
• Pipe and Duct Sizing

No prior knowledge of Hevacomp software required but knowledge in mechanical design is an advantage. Please find details below:

In case you missed the February AssetWise Exor SIG or would like to listen to the meeting again, the recording is now available on the Learn Server, along with previous SIG meetings.

The agenda for the February meeting included:

• GIS-T Update - We have some exciting plans and activities we would like to share with you.
•  An update on AWLRS
•  Information on a new Exor / AssetWise Release

You can find the recordings at:

• http://learn.bentley.com/app/Public/
• Then click on the button "find training"
• Select the AssetWise product line
• Then select AssetWise Roads and Highways SIG learning path.

If you would like to be added to the AssetWise Exor live SIG meetings and are not currently receiving an email invitation, please email Russell.page@bentley.com to be added to the list.

Navigator CONNECT is driven by 3 core tennants which defines our identity and philosiphy for making a great review application.

Single Experience

Review tools are only useful if the user knows how and when to use them to complete their tasks.  For this reason the user experience is a critical factor in every design of every feature.  We expect everyone in an organization to be able to use Navigator with little to no training or past experience with CAD or design applications.  All features are designed to provide a consistent experience across all our platforms .  This means features are designed so that they work equally well on a small touch screen as well as a traditional office style mouse and keyboard setup. In addition to the user experience the single experience concept extends out to the file format itself.  Navigator is unique in the fact that we have a single iModel file that is used across all platforms which is a differentiator for us in the market.

Connected Collaboration

The purpose of a review app is not just to view a model but to share feedback with the rest of the project team in order to share ideas, problems and other information to make projects stay on schedule and keep to budget.  Navigator features are designed to make sharing information with other Navigator users or other project participants easy and efficient.  Navigator uses a number of cloud services share information as this is the best way to allow sharing from either PC and mobile devices with little to no administrative setup or management.  While cloud services are the preferred method of sharing information all functionality is designed to support the concept of occasionally connected meaning a user should be able to disconnect from the network and complete a series of tasks and then connect to the network later to sync that information.

​Information Visibility​

​The i in BIM means information.  The difference between Navigator and a simple viewer is the ability to leverage the information contained in model and use it to create more rich and intuitive review workflows.  Whether this is using the information to easily find specific objects quickly or use the data to show visual reports in the context of the model to understand relationships of different model components.  The ability to work with this information is a key differentiator between Navigator and many other review solutions available.

image 1

image 2

here is a URL to a YouTube video showing Navigator functionality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcj2U5KCo1g 

Creating a Screen Menu

Screen menus are to be created in a .dgnlib file pointed by MS_GUIDGNLIBLIST configuration variable. The tools required to create screen menu are available in the Screen Menu ribbon group of the Interface tab of the Admin workflow. 

I have created a few circular elements in the SampleSM.dgnlib file uploaded here. Download and keep it at a location pointed by MS_GUIDGNLIBLIST. We will use this file to create a screen menu with a tool accessible from each circle.

First, we will add icons to the circles.

1. In the Screen Menus ribbon group, select Place Icon.
   After a small pause, a window displaying all the icons in the product is opened.
   
2. In the window, navigate to the icon named ElementSelection.
   Tip: An easier way to go to an icon is by typing the icon name.
3. Click and drag the Element Selection icon into the view window within the bottom green circle.
4. Enter a data point to set its size and place it.
   communities.bentley.com/.../0550.Video_2D00_2_2D00_1.mp4
5. Repeat the icon placement as shown below.
   
    
   Following table lists each icon and its name in the Place Icon tool:
   

   Icon	Icon Name
   	PlaceSmartLine
   	PlaceCircle
   	ShowOptions
   	Move
   	PlaceBlock
   	PlaceArc
   	Copy
   	PlaceText
   	MeasureDistance

6. Press <Esc> or select the Element Selection tool to end the Place Icon command.
7. Rotate the ShowOptions icon by -45^o so that it looks like an expand icon. 
8. Move and resize each icon to fit inside the circle.

Each icon and its background circle should be grouped so that they become a single entity or cell and you can apply the key-in to it. To do so, select each icon and its background circle and press <Ctrl+G>. <Ctrl+G> is the shortcut for Group command.

communities.bentley.com/.../8311.Video_2D00_6.mp4

Select the four yellow cells and change their level to Extended.

communities.bentley.com/.../6825.Video_2D00_7.mp4

Now let us associate key-ins to each tool.

1. Select the bottom green circle.
2. In the Interface tab of the Admin workflow, within Screen Menu ribbon group, click the Associate Key-in button.
   The Edit Associated Command dialog opens.
3. In the dialog, make the following entries:
   • Key-in: CHOOSE ELEMENT
   • Tooltip: Element Selection
   • Shortcut Key: A
   • Close Popup – On
4. Click OK.
   communities.bentley.com/.../6837.Video_2D00_1_2D00_2.mp4
5. Now choose the following selected cells one at a time and in the Edit Associate Command dialog add values from each row mentioned in the table below.
   
   

   Key-in	Tooltip	Shortcut Key	Icon Name
   PLACE SMARTLINE	Place SmartLine	L	PlaceSmartLine
   PLACE CIRCLE ICON	Place Circle	O	PlaceCircle
   MOVE ICON	Move	M	Move
   PLACE BLOCK ICON	Place Block	B	PlaceBlock

6. For the circle that has the ShowOptions icon, make the following settings in the Edit Associated Command dialog.
   • Tooltip: Expand to show more tools
   • Shortcut Key: +
   • Close Popup – Off
     Note: The Key-in field should be left empty.
7. Now, for the yellow circles in the outermost row, use the following table:
   

   Key-in	Tooltip	Shortcut Key	Icon Name
   PLACE ARC ICON	Place Arc	R	PlaceArc
   COPY ICON	Copy	C	Copy
   PLACE TEXT ICON	Place Text	T	PlaceText
   MEASURE DISTANCE ICON	Measure Distance	D	MeasureDistance

This completes the command association to each grouped element. In the next blog, we will create saved views, assign keyboard shortcuts to the screen menus, and learn how to use the screen menus.

Improve your asset acquisitions and generate 3D models faster with ContextCapture CONNECT Edition – Update 8

With the updated quality report in ContextCapture, you can quantify the accuracy of your work and better aligns it with RFP compliances. For planning of future capture missions, the report helps highlighting areas where you can increase the precision of your 3D model . Additionally, the recent update allows you to fast track the production of your 3D models with up to 15% faster process speed. And check out the Acute3D Viewer for more measurement options such as the new “survey feet” to meet American surveyors’ needs. Learn more about these recent updates in the tutorial videos:

• Multi-selection of images in the 3D-View
• Quality report

ContextCapture CONNECT Edition - Update 8 also includes the following improvements:

• Hybrid models improvements
• Improved Export Uniquemesh feature
• Point cloud only based reconstruction
• New AT-preset to handle thin structures (pylon, telecommunication towers)

Editing your reality data is now easier with ContextCapture Editor – Update 2

Streamline your workflows by directly accessing and streaming your reality meshes from ProjectWise ContextShare. You can easily extract features and analyze your reality data to perform calculate volume, extract ground, flatten areas, and more.  

With the latest update, you can quickly create Scalable Mesh from terrain data and drape aerial imagery to enhance the display. And you can quickly compare point clouds with reality meshes when you display point clouds in cross section views using only a cut plane.

Check out new Scalable Mesh creation tutorial video

Microsoft is currently experiencing problems with some Virtual Machines out of the UK datacenter starting at 20:12 UTC. During this time some hosted ProjectWise systems may experience issues. For additional information on the Azure related issues please see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/. Once all systems are cleared alerts an update will be posted.  

All hosted systems in the Azure UK datacenter have cleared alerts and should be online.

Arrive at the airport and then notice that your flight is delayed. With Google Flights, that is now a thing of the past. The website now offers not only information about flights, but also predicts whether a flight is delayed and why.

Data
According to tech website 9to5google.com , Google uses historical data for the prediction. Only if eighty percent is certain that a flight is actually delayed, does Google provide a notification. Nothing happens at a lower percentage. At the moment, Google Flights only displays a notification if the flight is delayed and has already departed.

Reason Google
predicts whether a flight is delayed. This could be the weather, for example, or because an airplane arrives late at the airport.

Tickets
The website also recently shows what you get as a traveler when you buy a ticket from Delta Air Lines, American Airlines or United Airlines. At those companies, stripped tickets are for sale, in some cases only a seat is bought. What is and is not included with the tickets is not always clear. Google now shows what you get with the ticket before buying.