Expert: Bill DeShawn - 4/17/2008

Question
Hey Bill, I work for an civil estimating group in a large company that creates 3D models of many of our projects.  At the moment, each element of these models is added into the 3D file, then later we as estimators count each of these elements by hand from the paper plans to get our quantities.  To me, this seems like duplicate, unnecessary effort.  Is there any way to draw quantities of like objects from a 3D model?  Some sort of report would be ideal, but I have yet to find a way of generating one.  We are using microstation 2004, and I know you're expertise is specifically with AutoCAD, but I was wondering if you might be able to direct my question to somewhere where it could be answered. Thank you very much, Clayton

Answer
Thank you for understanding that I do not have Microstation knowledge.  Yes, I think I can point you in a good direction for information regarding Microstation.  Google has Web access to Usenet Newsgroups.  The ones you might be interested in are:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.cad.microstation/topics?hl=en&lnk=srg
http://groups.google.com/group/bentleymicrostationv8mdl?hl=en&lnk=gschg

There are a few others, but their activity is very low.

A tutorial can be found here:
http://www.ider.herts.ac.uk/cad/

courses here:
http://www.training.bossintl.com/html/microstation-cad.html

The first newsgroup, though is probably where most people bring their Microstation questions.

Good luck.
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn