The Bentley User Group UK is holding a MicroStation Connect event at the offices of Foster + Partners in London, on the evening of 9th June from 6pm.
Main presentations will be from Stephen Holmes and Robert Jones of Foster + Partners.
Marco Salino from Bentley Development is flying over to be at the event to field questions and take feedback.
The area being covered in detail (Item Sets and Display Rules) will have significant bearing on the future direction of ABD. They will also recap all the new features.

Booking is via : Eventbrite.

The first meeting of the Bentley User Group UK was opened by Greg Bentley who highlighted the Reality Modelling capabilities of Bentley's ContextCapture (formerly Acute3D) tools and highlighted some of the UK finalists and winners of 2015 BE Inspired awards.

Greg Bentley's presentation

Ian Lapper introduced the new group and it's programme:

Chairman's presentation

Stephen Holmes and Robert Jones of Foster + Partners presented an introduction to the MicroStation CONNECT (CE) Edition. Robert gave a brief overview of the new features that MicroStation CE has to offer. Stephen talked us through the changes and improvments to the CONNECT Edition workspace configuration with some useful some tips and advice aimed at orgainisations of all sizes. The overall lesson was that the new workspace has a clearer structure and offers additional flexibility as standard.

Foster + Partners presentation

The currently planned dates for Bentley User Group UK events are as follows, see the Events page for detailed listings as plans firm up:

CONNECT Configuration	21 January 2016
CONNECT UI	17 March 016
CONNECT Item Sets/Reporting	09 June 2016
CONNECT Document Centre	TBC
CONNECT Printing	TBC
CONNECT Parametrics	TBC

Over the past couple of years I have researched the DGN Compress commands/tools both in the context of the MicroStation platform and AECOsim Building Designer. I've recently revisited the topic. My list of Communities content on the Compress feature has got a little longer, some updates have been added to the earlier pieces as linked here:

What does 'Compress File on Exit' do? I was surprised to find out how little the User Preference 'Compress on Exit' actually does.

Compress Options covers the options available in MicroStation.

How to turn ON/OFF Compress options via Key-in is helpful when running a compress operation with the Batch Processor:

Compress Files by Batch Process, Batch Processing using the Compress Commands is a far better approach to purging DGN files than 'Compress File on Exit'.

For AECOsim Building Designer also read:

Compress Options in AECOSim Building Designer - Behaviour and Configuration

Compress Options can affect Drawing View performance [in AECOsim Building Designer]

How and where to set up your models in MicroStation, particularly in AECOsim Building Designer, is a question (or series of questions actually) that require some thought and careful consideration in all but the smallest projects. The following is a collection of links to articles on this topic that should be of help to anyone involved in project set up:

Setting Up in the Real World or "Where do we model?"
Setting Up in the Real World – GeoReferencing
Setting Up in the Real World – GeoReferencing : Large Sites
Setting Up in the Real World – Labelling Coordinates
Setting Up in the Real World – UK Coordinate Systems

When working with Dynamic Views in MicroStation, and particularly in AECOsim Building Designer where Drawing Views tend to be more complex, using cached Visible Edges will dramatically improve performance and consistency, read these two articles for a detailed run down on why!

ABD SS6 - Best Practices - Cached Visible Edges
Batch Update of Cached Visible Edges (CVE) in AECOsim Building Designer