Background: I am computer softrware developer and architect. I am very familiar with most CAD software, however, my microstation knowledge is limited. My better half is a landscape architect student about to do her master thesis now. She is making one final design work with MS V8 (student version). She is fluent with previous version(s) of MS and V8 seems to be source of many problems.

Problem:

It would seem like that she can not select anything first and then click some other tool to do some changes. The selection just drops immediately. The system only works so that she picks a tool and then clicks items. Is this how v8 works? Are we missing something here? What could be the problem?

Example: She has some text items (elevation values) on a layer and she wants to move them to another layer. Best way to go work would be to use 'select by attributes' to get all these certain numbers selected and then use other tools to move them to other layer.

She opens the select by attributes and filters a nice selection. This activates the arrow tool. She closes the select by attributes and the selection is still on. Now, if she picks any other tool, say 'change element attributes' to move them to another layer, the selection just drops. There seems to be no way around this. The only thing I managed to do after selection was cut and paste, any tool icon on screen drops the selection.

In v7 you could select stuff and then apply the tool. It seemed, that the manual or this forum did not mention this issue at all so whether there is a bug or we are missing something here. If it is a bug, what could it be?

She needs to get the stuff done, so now she is selecting stuff by hand (lots of clicking and time needed). Please help me to help her.