Stockholm, SWEDEN, 2010.08.13 =================== PeekView v1.1.0 =================== INTRODUCTION: PeekView is a discrete tool which is allowing you to toggle View Display Style "on-the-fly" by simply pressing a hotkey. Pressing it again will return you to the previous View Display Style. This is why it is called PeekView. It peeks into another style. In other words, PeekView always preserves the previous Display Styles for all affected views. You just peek into another Style but you do it with assumed intent to go back to previous one once you are done. This effectively means that at any given moment, there are only two View Display Styles maintained for each View: the current one and the previous one. What the previous one contains is decided by state of 'keep last peek' toggle. Pressing the same hotkey twice always toggles between those two Styles. In addition to toggling View Display Styles, the selected View Presentation Attributes can be temporarily overriden while peeking into another Style. This is handy when you want to peek on your model without seeing dimensions or patterns or whatever you want to override during peek. You can define up to three hotkeys for three different view modes. The target view can be either the one predefined by you or it will be selected dynamically. CUSTOMIZING WORKFLOW: 'keep viewing changes' - When OFF, after peeking to another View Display Style subsequent zooms, rotations, level display operations will be discarded. Your previous view setup will be restored when toggling back. When ON, all this will be preserved. Default is ON. 'keep last peek' - When OFF, you will always toggle back to the original View Display Style, regardless how many different Styles you were applying via PeekView. When ON, you will always toggle back to the next last used Style which may be different from the original one when you started. Default is ON. To open the dialog box use keyin: PEEKVIEW SETTINGS To open the About info box use keyin: PEEKVIEW HELP To toggle the use of View Presentation overrides use keyins: PEEKVIEW OVERRIDES PEEKVIEW OVERRIDES ON PEEKVIEW OVERRIDES OFF INSTALLATION: Unpack contents of attached archive to your \mdlapps directory and start the tool via key-in: MDL LOAD PEEKVIEW Manually starting PeekView via keyin will always open the PeekView dialog box. However starting PeekView via MS_DGNAPPS environment variable will not open it. =================== Change Log =================== (*) v0.1 Alpha: - initial proof of concept released (*) v0.2 Alpha: - Changed behavior after a hotkey. Now the viewing command is always unconditionally terminated. This avoids unexpected View Display Mode changes on unrelated views (my thanks goes to Thomas Voghera for feedback on this issue). (*) v0.3 Alpha: - Added an option to allow preserving intermediate viewing commands while returning to original View Display Mode. Unfortunately this reduces the number of available modes, because I have yet to find where MicroStation stores the tidbit about WHICH named Display Style is active... (Thanks to Peter Tegza for higlighting this issue) (*) v0.4 Alpha: - Fixed bug which affected detection of some hotkeys. (Thanks to Adrian C for alerting me) (*) v0.5 Alpha: - Fixed glitch causing keyin history list being flowed by PeekView. (Thanks to Peter Tegza for alerting me) - Improved 'keep viewing changes'. Now it preserves all original View Styles. - Added ability to define new Display Styles. See 'Known Problems' below. (*) v1.0.0 Beta: - Added View Attribute overrides to be automatically applied while in peek. You decide which ones. - Main dialog box can now be dismissed. - Added keyin interface PEEKVIEW SETTINGS PEEKVIEW OVERRIDES [ON|OFF] PEEKVIEW HELP - Added intro. (*) v1.0.1 Beta: - Fixed bug: when unloading or switching DGN Models, PeekView from now on will respect 'keep viewing changes' setting. (*) v1.0.2: THIS IS A PRODUCTION RELEASE - Fixed bug: target view should be reopened automatically if it was closed before issuing the hotkey. - Fixed bug: now PeekView works correctly when started by other means than keyin, for example as a DGNAPP (MS_DGNAPPS). - New toggle: 'keep last peek' was added. It is enabled by default. This further streamlines the most common workflows. (*) v1.1.0: THIS IS A PRODUCTION RELEASE UPDATE - Added a hotkey to enable baselining of view setup at any time. In other words, now you can force PeekView to accept your current views setup as a new starting point for peeking (otherwise the starting point would be whatever was found when you opened your DGN file or reloaded PeekView). - Added feedback to indicate which Views are peeked at the moment and which (if any) hotkey will "unpeek" them. This shows in annotated View title bars. - Fixed bug: viewing commands are no longer interrupted when peeking. This bug was a side effect of using another viewing command by PeekView to change display styles. As new viewing command always terminate the previous one, my workaround is to detect and restart the previous one when PeekView is done with activating the new view style. The more elegant solution will be implemented when Bentley enhance the current MDL API to enable activating view styles programmatically. =================== Known Problems =================== Only if you are using other View Display Styles beside those which are delivered with MicroStation, please read on. There is currently a limitation in MicroStation programming interfaces which prevents detection of available View Display Styles by third party programs, like this one. According to Bentley this limitation will be removed in future updates to MicroStation. Until this happens, PeekView has no way to know which styles are available. I have hardcoded those which are delivered with MicroStation but nothing prevents you from adding new ones. In order to circumvent this limitation, you need to provide some help to PeekView. If you define a configuration variable PEEKVIEW_ADDITIONAL_VIEW_STYLES and put in it a comma-delimited list of names of your custom View Styles, you will find them available in PeekView. Tested on MicroStation 8.11.5.17 thru MicroStation 8.11.7.428 (SS2) =================== LICENSE: =================== This is a free software. You are free to use this tool without any obligations to me whatsoever. Obviously, you are using it entirely on your own risk. All updates to this tool will be posted on our web site (http://www.ustation.se) for free download. I hope that you will find PeekView very useful for your work. All constructive feedback is strongly encouraged. Very best regards, /Chris Zakrewsky Team uStation AB www.ustation.se S W E D E N