Demo.dgn 01 High Performance Display Bentley Descartes has been designed to seamlessly integrate into the Raster Manager and all tool boxes, menus, dialog boxes, and other interface operations are consistent with MicroStation conventions. Bentley Descartes extends the functionality of the Raster Manager by adding a rich set of raster editing tools to the Raster Managers menu bar. These can be found in the following menus: Edit, Display, Settings, Tools, Utilities, and Help In this model, there are two raster images that, if properly positioned, should form a seamless mosaic. In other words, the image at the top of the screen should appear in the location of the green block. Since rasters now behave like design elements, you can select them using the MicroStation Element Selection tool, add them to an active selection set, and apply MicroStation tools such as Move and Scale on selection sets with both raster and vector elements. [Use Element Selection tool to move raster towards green block.] [Use Move Element to move raster to correct position.] Bentley Descartes is fully supported by MicroStation s UNDO tool which allows you to restore the images to their original condition. Likewise, Descartes can also take advantage of MicroStation s REDO tool to revert the last UNDO operation. As you can see the images are overlapping each other by a significant amount, and the image on the left is above the one on the right. I can easily re order the
images by simply dragging and dropping them to a new position in the Raster Manager. Since images are now treated as a MicroStation element, I can easily move this image to the level named Rasters and control its display with the Level Display dialog. The images are now ready to be mosaiced together. The Mosaic toolbox is used to balance the tone between all images of a mosaic and to automatically, or semiautomatically, create a mosaic by cutting the overlapping sections and applying the feathering tool to hide the seam of the cut. To create the mosaic, all I need to do is select the Define Seam tool and select each image. [Turn on all levels.] [Turn off the display of the border.] This new functionality also allows me to display the raster between vector elements by utilizing MicroStation s Display Priority and Descartes Display Planes. Let s take a closer look. As you can see, I ve enabled the display of the vector elements that represent the roads and hydrography in this area. By default, all images are attached to the Background plane as noted in the first column in the Raster Manager. By simply selecting the rasters and selecting this
column I can move them to either the design or foreground planes. As expected, the images are now in front of the vector graphics. By changing the display plane to Design, the rasters now display between the vector elements. This is the result of employing MicroStation s Display Priority to control the display order of the elements. In this case, the residential roads have a higher display priority than the images and remaining graphic which makes them appear on top of the display stack. 02 Map Sheet Index A new tool that was added for Descartes V8i is Merge which allows you to quickly and easily create new images based a mapping grid. For example, I have a need to chop up the two attached images into eight new files as defined by the shapes arranged in columns and rows in this map grid model. The text nodes in the center of each shape will be used to define the new file names. 02 Merge The settings in the Merge tool allow you control all aspects of the Merge process including the elements to process, the resolution, and file format. Since I m wanting to use a map sheet index, I ll set the Grid Definition to the appropriate model and run the job. [Use c:\temp\ for the output folder]
[RM > Attach > show preview of each new image.] 03 Cleanup Binary images contain two colors and are typically, although not limited to, black and white scanned documents. For this reason, Bentley Descartes offers a specialized tool that is used to remove background noise, or speckles, from scanned documents. Here we can see a scanned document that s quite dirty, has lots of background noise, and a couple of rings from someone s coffee mug. [Tools > Touch Up] The Touch Up toolbox contains three tools which are used to clean images. Paint is used to apply colour to images, Erase is used to earse the image inside an area, and Cleanup is used to remove speckles and holes. The size field in the Tool Settings box is very important since it determines what qualifies as a speckle based upon a size factor. [Measure and set size.] [Clean an area then change setting and clean entire image.]
[Use erase to clean leftovers.] Once a scanned document has been cleaned it s ready for editing, stamping and vectorizing. 04 Vectorize and Stamp In this model you can see a scanned in map of a subdivision that has been completely cleaned. This is a necessary step in order to optimize the vectorization process. The Vectorize tool box includes a set of enhanced editing tools that support extraction of feature information from images. All elements digitized with the Vectorize tools are added to the active design file as complex chains, which consist of one or more line string elements that can contain arcs. The first three tools are for placing a new element or continuing or editing an existing one. Designed for heads up digitizing, they are manual and directly controlled by the operator when raster data is not present or not used. The next tools are for controlling automatic line conversion from raster to vector. These functions cannot work without raster data. They are organized in such a manner that any number of raster lines or circles can be automatically converted in a row. Finally the last set of tools are used to control the nodes which define the ends and bends of the newly placed vector data. To demonstrate some of this functionality I ll use the Convert Lines tool which is used to automatically convert one or more raster lines and to place a line string for each raster line which is converted. The behavior of this function depends upon where it is started: For example, if it s started along a raster line, it s converted in both directions until a break point sucy as a raster intersection, raster end or node is hit.
If it is started at a free end of a raster line, then the raster line is converted in the only possible direction until a break point is hit. And finally if it s at a raster all raster branches are converted until a break point is hit. [Max Line Width = 20] [Touch some lines.] You can also auto convert large portions of the file by selecting the Convert Area tool. [Convert a block of raster data.] And, when images are in good condition with excellent line quality, they may be good candidates for vectorizing all connected line work by using the Convert Connected Lines tool. A requirement often needed by those who do mapping is to convert raster contours to vector elements. 05 Contours The Convert Contours tool is used to automatically convert one or more raster contour lines and to place a line string for each raster line which is converted. In addition, it is possible to assign the elevation for the contour being traced and to increment the Z value for subsequent contour lines.
Since the attached image contains several colours, I ll quickly build a colour mask which instructs the tool to only locate and work with the colours defined in the mask. [Tools > Colour Mask] [Add to Mask] [Select the two browns] [Use Hilite to verify] [LV=Contours] [Digitize several contours] [Rotate view to front to show elevation] Another aspect of vectorizing images is being able to convert raster text to MicroStation text elements.
06 OCR Bentley Descartes provides a set of tools that you can use to extract text or symbols from scanned drawings or images and place them into a design. New features allow you to perform automatic multiple raster text selection and conversion. Combine these tools with the vectorize tools presented a moment ago and you ve got an efficient environment for your data conversion projects. RM Tools > Text/Cells The first three tools allow you to select and build selection sets containing raster text. Once a selection set has been created, you can either remove elements or proceed to convert them with the tools provided. Let s take a closer look by building a selection set with the Select Horizontal Text tool. [Convert Now > Off] [Shrink Selection to Text > On] As I select the text from the image, you ll notice that it is bounded by selection box. A red box indicates that it s the active text, while the green boxes are inactive and are in the queue to be converted. When I click the Convert Now option a special text editor will open that allows me to visually inspect and edit the text prior to conversion. I can also enable the Erase Raster option to manage the content of the images as they are upgraded to vector design files. For large blocks of text, I can use the Select Multiple Text tool and simply drag a block around an area of text.
07 Stamp Bentley Descartes provides a specialized set of tools to add raster representation of vector design elements to image files. This provides a unique ability to edit raster files using MicroStation vector drawing and annotation tools to create image files that contain both raster and vector information. This Rasterize tool box provides tools to stamp, burn, or embed design file elements into a raster document. The Merge tool is also provided in this tool box, as well as in the Descartes Control tool box. You may recall that this tool is used to copy and merge images to create new raster files with or without stamped vector data. Finally, there are line matching tools to set the desired pixel thickness of the linework. The red elements represent a new subdivision and need to be stamped into the image. I can do this by using the Stamp Vector tool which stamps design vector elements into raster images by using a fence or selection set. The last tool in this tool box allows me to turn on the Automatic Vector Stamping setting which does exactly as its name implies. As I place design elements in the file they will automatically be stamped onto the raster. This toggle works for all element types including cells, text and complex elements.
08 Edit and Local Transform Located in the Descartes Raster Edit tool box, as well as the Raster Managers Tools menu, the Cut/Copy/Paste tool box is used to cut, copy and paste regions of images via the system clipboard. Since these tools use the Windows clipboard, it s possible to copy and paste rasters to and from third party applications such as Microsoft Word. Of course you can also use these tools to cut, copy and paste portions of the image back into the same image when performing general editing. The new Local Transform tool box contains tools designed to perform local transformations inside a raster. All the data used with these tools come from and/or go to the same raster and inclues local copy, move, scale, rotate, mirror and warp tools. For example, if I need to move a raster object from one location to another, I could use the cut and paste technique, or simply use the Local Move tool. Finally, Bentley Descartes V8i version includes a nice selection of filters and utilities that Adobe Photoshop users may be familiar with.
09 Filters The Enhance Image tool box contains tools that are used to analyze an image, produce a colour composite through color compression, change the default backfill color and apply filters. Histogram Provides a method of exploring data distribution and statistical information about a selected image. Contrast Stretch Provides the ability to change the contrast of an image. Density Slicing Isolates ranges of specific pixels to for visual and statistical analysis. Blur Applies a blurring effect to the active image. Sharpen Applies a sharpening effect to the active image. Smooth Applies a smoothing effect to the active image. Detail Sharpens the details of an images. Edge Enhance Enhances the boundaries of image objects. Find Edges Converts the image to appear as if traced. Color Table Used to edit the colour palette of the selected image. This concludes my functional overview of Bentley Descartes V8i version.