Two screens for Microstation?
Eagle
Hi there
I am a student at the Cape Techinkon in Cape Town, South Africa. I am
trying to learn this amazing programme. At the moment I have a
standard sized screen and I don't have the money to buy a larger one.
Someone was telling me that it is possible to run two screens and
drag, or place all the tools in the one screen and use the other
screen to keep the active drawing on.
Has anyone done this or knows something about doing this? I would
really like to know as it will help me a lot.
Cheers
Dens gt
Open a Microstation file and go to Workspaces-> Preferences-> GUi Options.
Check the box for "Open two application screens" or something close to
that (I am going on memory here and that can be pretty dicey sometimes!).
Close Microstation and restart it- it will have two screens. Use ALT-TAB
to navigate between them.
Nick Kovach
I have been able to use 2 screens by using a Hercules video adapter along
side my VGA card. The Hercules card is a monochrome card, but it gets the
job done. I can drop tools on the Hercules monitor side and use the VGA
for rendering and such.
Nick
Jim Weisgram
Ea...@power.co.za (Eagle) wrote:
>Hi there
>I am a student at the Cape Techinkon in Cape Town, South Africa. I am
>trying to learn this amazing programme. At the moment I have a
>standard sized screen and I don't have the money to buy a larger one.
>Someone was telling me that it is possible to run two screens and
>drag, or place all the tools in the one screen and use the other
>screen to keep the active drawing on.
>Has anyone done this or knows something about doing this? I would
>really like to know as it will help me a lot.
>Cheers
The tip in the other reply does work, and I do use it. However, I think the
feature was designed to run on 2 monitors and 2 monitors are much better than
one.
Do you want to use 2 monitors? If so, the specifics vary depending on your
hardware and your operating system.
In DOS, you typically need a second video adapter and the correct MicroStation
drivers for that adapter. The second adapter must be designed not to conflict
with the first. For example 2 VGA or SVGA cards will typically try to write to
the exact same memory locations, and will not work the way you want. On the
other hand, a Matrox card will coexist. So will the super cheap Hercules
monochrome adapter and monochrome monitor, but generally installing this in a
system with an ISA based SVGA card will cause the whole video subsystem to run
in 8 bit mode, slowing performance. So you need to find out what will work in
your system. Once the monitors are installed use the USCONFIG utility to
configure MicroStation to support the second monitor.
In Windows 95 or NT, you need a card with dual video ports and the appropriate
Windows driver to create a large desktop that spans both monitors, or 2 cards
(typically identical cards) that offer the same driver support. There was a
recent posting in this forum that listed many cards from various manufacturers.
Possibly you can find it by using Deja Vue to search for it. In our world, we
use 2 Matrox Millennium cards for this purpose, but they don't support dual
screen in Win95, just WinNT.
--
All opinions expressed are mine and not my employers
Jim Weisgram
Oregon Department of Transportation
Remove "2" in email address when replying
Shawn Rose
Ea...@power.co.za (Eagle) wrote:
>Hi there
>I am a student at the Cape Techinkon in Cape Town, South Africa. I am
>trying to learn this amazing programme. At the moment I have a
>standard sized screen and I don't have the money to buy a larger one.
>Someone was telling me that it is possible to run two screens and
>drag, or place all the tools in the one screen and use the other
>screen to keep the active drawing on.
>Has anyone done this or knows something about doing this? I would
>really like to know as it will help me a lot.
>Cheers
It is quite commonly done, but the investment that you would have to
make in purchasing a graphics card capable of doing this, or two
graphics cards that will tolerate each other, as well as the
additional monitor would probably cost more than simply buying a
larger monitor. This said, two monitors is definitely better than
one, but I personally feel that it's a waste of good screen real
estate to simply use a monitor for menus. You might as well use a
digitizing tablet for that. I use the left screen to display the
overview of my drawing, while the right screen I use for detail work.
When working in 3D, I use the left screen for my three ortho views
(top,front,right/left) and an isometric view. With respect to the
menus, it's better to develop good practices for knowing when to leave
a palette open or close it, and to create new tool boxes for those
common operations that you want to perform.
There are many graphics cards capable of handling dual screens,
Appian, miro, Number Nine, Matrox, etc. You can check these out and
see if it is an economical solution for you.
Good luck!
Shawn Rose
Joe Jones
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_01BCA0B1.EF0885E0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Heres a super "El - Cheapo" solution. In fact its FREE!! At home I only
have a 14" monitor, which means I need the dwg window to fill the whole
screen - leaving no room for menu pallettes.
Free Solution (Win95)
1) goto Workspace >> Preferences >> GUI Options
2) Toggle on "open two applications windows"
3) Close Microstation and restart it.
4) Nothing appears to have changed, but there is a second
microstation window now, evident in the task bar.
5) Resize the two Microstation windows so you can see them both.
6) Drag menu pallettes into the second window
Use alt-tab or use the task bar to select icons and such. Admittedly
this isn't an ideal solution and requires extra mouse clicks, but it IS
free.
--
Keeper: "Captain Pike has illusion, and you have reality. May you find
your way
as pleasant."
--"The Menagerie", Stardate
Joe Jones
jones...@timken.com
remove AT to reply
------=_NextPart_000_01BCA0B1.EF0885E0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<html><head></head><BODY bgcolor=3D"#FFFFFF"><p><font size=3D2 =
color=3D"#000000" face=3D"Arial">Heres a super "El - Cheapo" =
solution. In fact its FREE!! At home I only<br>have a =
14" monitor, which means I need the dwg window to fill the =
whole<br>screen - leaving no room for menu pallettes.<br><br>Free =
Solution (Win95)<br>1) goto Workspace >> Preferences >> GUI =
Options<br>2) Toggle on "open two applications windows"<br>3) =
Close Microstation and restart it.<br>4) Nothing appears to have =
changed, but there is a second<br> microstation window now, =
evident in the task bar.<br>5) Resize the two Microstation windows so =
you can see them both.<br>6) Drag menu pallettes into the second =
window<br><br>Use alt-tab or use the task bar to select icons and such. =
Admittedly<br>this isn't an ideal solution and requires extra =
mouse clicks, but it IS<br>free.<br><br>-- <br>Keeper: "Captain =
Pike has illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way<br> =
as pleasant."<br>--"The Menagerie", =
Stardate<br><br>Joe Jones<br>jones...@timken.com<br>remove AT to =
reply</p>
</font></body></html>
------=_NextPart_000_01BCA0B1.EF0885E0--