Original Article Date: Nov 24, 2006

With thanks to Eric Cooper for this article. Available in all versions of MicroStation, the key-in browser is used to browse, construct and enter commands in order to have MicroStation perform or execute a specific task. This short article is a nice overview of the Key-in Browser and is must read for new users as well as those of you migrating from the AutoCAD environment.

To access the Key-in Browser, do any one of the following (Note that not all of these are available in all versions of MicroStation)

Select Utilities > Key-in
Select Help > Key-in Browswer
Press F9 if you’re using the default function key menu.
When the focus is Home press Enter (MicroStation V8 XM Edition and later).
Select the Key-in button from the Primary Tools tool box. Note that this button is hidden by default.

Once opened, the following three-part dialog will be presented. Note that it can easily be resized and docked as shown.

From top to bottom the parts of this dialog are:

Key-in Field - This is the area where commands are typed in. The commands are not executed until either the Enter is pressed on the keyboard, or the Run Key-in button is selected.

A terrific feature of the key-in field is that the full command does not need to be typed in. Simply enter the first two of three characters until you see the desired command display, press the space bar and MicroStation will fill in the rest.

In the clip below, I enter c, o, p, space and MicroStation fills in copy, I then press p, space and the command parallel is filled in. Finally, I press d, space and distance is auto-filled.

List Boxes - As seen in the clip above, each of the each of the four columns, or list boxes, corresponds to a command in MicroStation’s hierarchical key-in language. For example, selecting or keying in the command place in the left list box will then show all of the available options in the second column. Selecting circle will then show all of the available options for Place Circle in the third column. And finally, selecting edge will show all of the available options for place circle edge in the fourth column

Rather than wading through hundreds of key-ins, you can also employ the use of the key-in tables to help isolate a set of commands.

Key-in History - The bottom portion of the dialog displays previous key-ins submitted to MicroStation. To re-submit them, simply double-click the command from this area.

Understanding and using the MicroStation Key-in Browser will open a whole new world of commands to you.

AskInga Article #305