A thematic display involves displaying a model with focus on a particular property or "Theme". You can now create thematic display styles, manage them in DGNLib files, and use them for references or dynamic views in the same manner as you could use other display styles.

Thematic displays are generated by special applications called Display Style Handlers. These handlers can be created by applications to meet discipline specific needs. The Solar Exposure calculator provides handlers to display its analysis results such as solar exposure, shadowing and so on.

MicroStation includes the following thematic display handlers:

• Height — Color is derived from the height (elevation) of the geometry.
• Slope — Color is derived from either slope angle or percentage (rise/run).
• Aspect Angle — Color is derived from the slope aspect angle. This is a measure of the direction of the slope.
• Hill Shade — Color is derived from the altitude and azimuth angles.

The default display styles DGNLib (DrawingSeed.dgnlib) contains display styles to incorporate common thematic display options such as Height, Slope and Aspect Angle. You can create additional thematic display styles in the Display Styles dialog.