An important component of Bentley Utilities Designer is the Editor. The Editor is a standalone application that combines MicroStation and Bentley Map capabilities with the ability to work with (logical) networks and do utility-specific analysis and reporting, e.g. leak analysis, profile generartion, etc.

For those who are familiar with Bentley Map Standalone or Bentley Map Enterprise, the Bentley Utility Designer Editor is a similar product — only with the focus on creating, maintaining and analyzing utility networks.

By default, Bentley Utiltities Designer comes with an example project – BentleyUD_DGN – that includes workspaces for all supported commodities:

The example project might not always be what your are looking for when exploring the Editor's capabilities 

This is an example on how to quickly setup a small project of your own in the Editor, e.g. when you want to create a project with only a single commodity, possibly with some minor changes or additions.

1. Take a copy of the XML schema file for the commodity of choice and save it in a different location (under a different name).
   
   The schema files are located in the subfolders under  Bentley\UtilitiesDesigner V8i\UtilitiesDesigner\DataModel
   
   For example, the BentleyWater_DGN.xml file:
   
   
    
2. In the Bentley Geospatial Administrator, change the project name, description, workspace root directory and project parent directory to ensure that your project is saved with name and location of your choice.
   
   
   
   
3. After making the desired changes, save and export the schema.
   
   This will create a the new project folder structure, for example:
   
   
    
4. In addition to this default folder structure, Bentley Utilities Designer requires some additional XML metadata files in order to run properly. These files are located in the Configuration folder of the data model that was selected above:
   
   
   
   
5. The highlighted files need to be copied into subfolders of the project's main (aka - the "All Users") xml folder. 
   
   
   
   This table provides an overview of what file needs to be copied where (this step might require the manual creation of folders).
   
   Copy from: ..\DataModel\<commodity>\Configuration
   Copy to: ..\<project name>\xml
   

   Metadata file	Copy to Subfolder
   BentleyUtilityConfiguration.xml	configuration
   w_epanetexport.xml	interop
   w_wtrgexport.xml	interop
   w_leakanalysis.xml	leakanalysis
   w_leakcrosstab.xslt	leakanalysis
   w_leaktabreport.xslt	leakanalysis
   networks.xml	network

    
6.  With the extra configuration files in place, you should be able to start the Bentley Utilities Designer Editor with your own project.