CADD Engineering Standards - Ohio Department of Transportation

January 18, 2013
You do not need to assign a priority value to the elements as they are placed in the design file. The
elements will be displayed according to the priority value that is assigned to the level.
Note: The Active Element Priority value is not a ByLevel setting. When the Active Level is
changed on the Attributes tool bar, the value of the Active Element Priority is not set to match
the value assigned to the level.
In the case where two elements are placed on different levels that have the same priority setting, the last
element drawn is displayed on top. This can be changed by assigning a priority value to the element.
Priority values can be assigned when the element is initially placed, or assigned later with the Change
Element Attributes tool.
The priority value assigned to an element is not an “override” of the level setting. The priority value
assigned to an individual element is “relative” to the level setting. Behind the scenes, MicroStation uses
an equation (See BE Communites for further details) to determine the “final” priority value of the element.
However, most users will be content to know that modifying the priority assigned to an individual element
up or down by increments of one (1) will allow them to modify the display priority as needed.
It should be noted that the priority value of an element that is reported in the Element Info dialog is the
actual value assigned to the element, not the calculated value.
The priority of an element can be modified using the Change Element Attributes tool.
ODOT CADD Engineering Standards 13