MicroStation V8 Migration - the Odyssey

Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) began preparations in earnest for migrating to MicroStation Version 8 (MSV8) as our CADD platform in October 2004, with a rewrite of many of the ancillary programs that run with MSV8. In addition, we rewrote much of our CADD Software (now FDOT2004) which includes the Electronic Delivery Suite of tools that we use for the delivery of electronic projects. We issued our first release of FDOT2004 on May 26, 2005 based on MicroStation version 8.05.02.27. Prior to that release, we encountered a lot of issues with the MSV8. These were not addressed by Bentley Corp. prior to the May release. In June of 2005 Bentley Corp. retracted version 8.05.02.27 of MicroStation citing “work-flow issues”. Later that month, Bentley Corp. supplied MicroStation Version 8.05.02.35 (a SELECT release) on which GEOPAK certified its version 8.05.02.59. With the new release of MSV8, consultants and FDOT users began to report serious issues with custom line styles. Bentley Corp. released two more priority builds (versions 8.05.02.42 and later 8.05.02.48) to correct persistent problems with custom line-styles and plotting issues. To overcome these issues and other needed corrections, we released our second Maintenance Release of the FDOT2004 software based on version 8.05.02.42 However, due to plotting issues discovered immediately after the release, we later advised users to load version 8.05.02.48. Since GEOPAK only certifies on select releases, it was not certified for either of the last two priority builds.

MicroStation V8 Migration – Current Status

After receiving SELECT release of MicroStation version 8.05.02.55, FDOT began testing it with version 8.08.01.83 of GEOPAK and discovered bugs there as well, with the drainage module. Having received another priority build of MicroStation version 8.05.02.56 (on which GEOPAK is not certified) we continue testing and still find issues with the drainage module. However, it did finally resolve some custom line-style issues. FDOT is hoping for better cooperation and planning between Bentley, GEOPAK and other third party vendors on certified SELECT releases. FDOT has no plans to migrate to MicroStation XM, and prefers to use a stable V8 platform until XM or “Monet” proves to be stable.

Future FDOT2004 CADD Software Releases

We will issue a third maintenance release of the FDOT2004 software later this year. This will coincide with changes occurring in our Plans Production Manual (PPM), probably September / October timeframe of this year. Currently, it looks as if we will settle on GEOPAK version 8.8 and MicroStation version 8.05.02.5x.

Electronic Delivery

The FDOT began letting electronic plans on 100% of the submittals to Central Office and the Turnpike Enterprise by July 2005. The Florida Department of Transportation has seven regional districts and the Turnpike Enterprise. The latest statistics from April 2006 thru October 2006 indicate that 31,150 plus plan sheets were let electronically from Central Office alone. That represents more than 200 projects, or about 150 sheets on average per project. The smallest project in this group has seven plan sheets and largest has just over 3000 plan sheets. These statistics do not represent the entire October letting since the totals are not in for that letting month.

Migration to New Email System

The Florida Department of Transportation will migrate away from its current use of Lotus Notes / Domino Servers in favor of Microsoft Outlook / Exchange Servers. Cost is cited as the principle motive. Also the Department plans to use SharePoint Services extensively. The servers are being migrated by the close of 2006 and clients will be migrated beginning in early 2007.

Vista on the Horizon

The Florida Department of Transportation has begun investigating Microsoft Vista as a desktop operating system. Initial investigations have revealed that 16bit Windows help files (*.hlp) will not work with Vista. We are looking for the best solution to convert these. Furthermore, we discovered issues with XML parsers. Most of our electronic delivery suite is built using XML formats. We started with the MSXML version 4 xml parser provided by Microsoft. The new parser provided with Vista is MSXML version 6. Some of our software may not be compatible with the new parser. These two issues, the help files and XML parsers, alone may cause us significant impact before we can progress onto the Vista operating system. Also, our software may have issues with Internet Explorer V7.0 that ships with Vista.

Electronic Signing and Sealing by Other Professionals

With the release of the latest version of Professionals Electronic Data Delivery System (PEDDS) we now include the capability for professionals other than Engineers to sign and seal electronic plan sets and secure entire projects. During the 2006 session of the Florida Legislature, statutes were passed allowing Architects and Landscape Architects (two separate boards of licensure in Florida) to sign and seal their plans sets electronically. Subsequently, those boards of licensure have adopted rules implementing the newly legislated actions. Their rules use the same methods as for the Engineers and as implemented using the PEDDS Program. So, with version 2.5.3 of PEDDS we include the following; Engineers, Surveyors and Mappers, Geologist, Architects, Landscape Architects, Interior Designers (regulated by the Architectural Board) and finally an individual not using a professional license.

AutoCAD Standards

Registered Architects have settled on Autodesk *.DWG as a standard file format for CADD drawings delivered to FDOT. We are working to provide our standards in the AutoCAD environment. We have converted our cell libraries to AutoCAD blocks. Many of these were easily converted to dynamic blocks that give the user options as to how the block will look when placed on the drawing (also reduces the number of blocks). Additionally, we have replicated our Site Menu for AutoCAD. Providing our standards in the AutoCAD environment will give us a consistent standard and help ensure better conversion to MicroStation if need be.

Conversion of CAiCE Survey Data to MicroStationV8

In August of 2005, we realized a need for converting CAiCE survey data to MicroStation V8. Beginning with V8, the DGN file format is a closed proprietary format and can only be written using the MicroStation API. This requires a new method of conversion driven by MicroStation V8 running in automation mode in the back-ground. We wrote a Visual Basic Program hosted by MicroStation (VBA) to read the CAiCE data as an instruction set to draw a new drawing in MicroStation. The program utilizes the CAiCE feature coded elements and a cross-walk table we created between the CAiCE features and our FDOT standard named levels in MicroStation V8. The program will produce a MicroStation V8 file that complies fully (100%) to our CADD standards by using the features and the cross-walk.

LandXML

We have adopted the LandXML format as one of the deliverables for project data according to the FDOT PPM. This will eventually replace many of the old formats for Engineering and Survey data produced by 3rd party / proprietary programs. In the future, we will be writing XSLT translators to extend the utility of this data format. This will most likely occur first in the area of survey data and earthwork calculation.