Learning Microstation?

[deltacoolguy]

I have over 20 years experience in Acad, going back to DCA, and the last 2-3 years in C3D.

I have ZERO exeprience in Microstation.

An unusual number of engineers around here use Microstation exclusively.  If I were to be offered a position with one of them, what would be a reasonable time frame for learning Microstation to get to a point where I could be productive?

Roughly, just trying to get a ballpark figure.

[Jay_B]

I had learn Microstation and used it almost exclusively for several years. I would say 3 to 6 months with adequate support around you and say a 3 day entry level training class. Add a design software to the mix then maybe a bit longer to become truly proficient.

[Neilw_05]

It will depend on several factors:

Will you have a go-to person for support or will you be learning on your own?

Are you going to learn while working on live projects or are you going to follow some sort of training program?

How much time will you be spending each day in it?

I took my first step into Microstation in August 2007 when I started learning Power Civil, which is a stand alone civil design application built on Power Draft (somewhat equivalent to ACAD LT). I have no go-to person for help so I've had to dig up solutions to every problem on my own via. the help files and online sources. While I can get along pretty well doing most tasks in a typical workflow there are still many things I haven't learned to use, partly because I've had to port my work to Land Desktop for final drafting and documentation.

As was mentioned, if you have to learn a vertical product such as Power Civil you can expect a much longer learning curve. Online resources for help is very limited vs. Autocad and Civil 3D. Even the user forums are pretty dismal for getting help. The help files are antiquated and often too vague or inadequate for learning a task. I think most MS users work for large organizations with in house support, so they don't participate in public forums or publish blogs, etc.

The only way you are going to get up to speed in a reasonable time is to have a source for live support.

Once you get into it you'll find there are a bazillion new things to learn. Consider all the stuff you'd have to teach a person new to ACAD and Civil 3D. Even when you are familiar with CAD, the 2 products differ in so many ways.

User Interface, available tools and where to find them, Accudraw

Environment configuration, customization, standards

Terminology

Creating and using cells, text styles, dim styles, linestyles, annotation scale, multiple model spaces

Sheet layouts (very different)

Printing

Production workflows

What stuff works and what doesn't (big learning curve there)

And so much more.

[_Hathaway]

A very very long time. If you have 0 experience in MS it will be the most frustrating piece of software you ever use. I'm not saying it's bad, it is just completely and utterly different in every way you can imagine and then some.