[quote user="Maury"]Is your cell a shared cell or is it part of a cell library you are attaching?[/quote]
All cells start off in a cell library. The library doesn't differentiate between normal and shared cells: that differentiation happens only when you place a cell as a shared cell. Normal cells and shared cells differ in these ways from a user point of view...
- When you place an instance of a normal cell, the graphic elements are copied from the cell library and added to the active model
- When you place a second and subsequent instances of a normal cell, the graphic elements are copied each time from the cell library
- When you place the first instance of a shared cell, MicroStation copies the cell from the library and creates a shared cell definition element in the non-model cache of the active DGN file. Next, it creates a shared cell instance. The shared cell instance is linked internally to its definition element in the same DGN file
- When you place the second and subsequent instances of a shared cell, MicroStation finds the shared cell definition and creates a new shared cell instance referring to that definition
From the programmer's viewpoint, use the appropriate placement methods for shared and normal cells. Additionally, for a shared cell placement, the responsibility falls on the programmer to create the shared cell definition element before creating any shared cell instance.