Consolidating shortcut folders

[Neilw_05]

Up until now I've been creating my shortcut folders in the folder for my project drawings. So for project A, the shortcut folder is in A\shortcuts. The reason for doing this was to make it more intuitive for finding the shortcuts down the road and to avoid having project components located outside of the parent folder.

The problem is it is becoming a nuisance to browse to the project folder to set the working folder whenever I need to switch projects. I'm now considering consolidating all the shortcut folders into a main C3D projects folder (the way C3D was set up to work), though I'm not liking having to resort to redundant folders. For now it seems the lessor of the 2 evils.

I'd like to know what procedure to follow to make this work and what problems I'll encounter.

I don't have a lot of projects at this time (maybe 20).

P.S. One of the big downsides to having the shortcuts stored outside of the project folder is when the project gets archived. Unless special precautions are taken, the shortcuts will be overlooked in the archiving process. How are users addressing this?

[troma]

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@Neilw wrote:

One more concern about having a separate DS folder, what prevents users from pointing to a folder on their local machine or to an unauthorized folder on the network? (I know there is a variable that can be set in the user profiles but that could easily be overlooked).

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Office Standards.

Instruction.

Education.

Cajoling.

Threats.

Again, to my mind, there was more room for error when we had a different working folder for each project.  Then you did have to set it every time you started a new project and went to create a data shortcut.  Or every time you worked in a project that you hadn't worked in before, and went to create a data shortcut.  With one working folder for all time, you set it once and forget it.  (The exception to that is taking care of old projects set up the other way.)

I would turn your question on its head:  if you are getting everyone in the office to set up new projects and data shortcuts in new working folders, what prevents them from pointing wherever they like?  For us it is better if the working folder is set once and they don't have to think about it again.

I don't know anything about the variable you mention.  Can you elaborate?

[Neilw_05]

With regard to renaming projects, it is not unusual that we'll start a project as a proposal without setting it up as an official project. Once the proposal becomes official it gets moved and renamed.

As for restoring archived projects, there have been occasions where we'll resurrect a project to add on to it or it could be a phased project that was dormant for a time. In those cases we might copy it to the live projects folder and give it a new number, etc.

I do feel it is safest to keep shortcuts stored in the individual projects folders, but there is certainly a trade off. It's good to hear the pros and cons of both approaches.

[troma]

I certainly don't condemn either option. I like what we've got, but not going to tell anyone else how to run their office.

[Neilw_05]

I would turn your question on its head:  if you are getting everyone in the office to set up new projects and data shortcuts in new working folders, what prevents them from pointing wherever they like?  For us it is better if the working folder is set once and they don't have to think about it again.

You are right there is nothing to prevent a user from setting up a folder in the wrong place, but at least it is intuitive that they should go in the project folder and that is easily remembered.

I don't know anything about the variable you mention.  Can you elaborate?

I don't know anything more about it than what I read here in the help system (see the highlighted text on the page):

http://docs.autodesk.com/CIV3D/2013/ENU/filesCUG/empty_concept_38.htm

So if I were to consolidate all my shortcuts into a single folder, how should I go about it?

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[troma]

Part of that help said:

 This may be useful in situations where multiple users share a project, and the project directory is in different locations on each user’s machine.

So I would say that it doesn't apply to either setup, since we're both keeping everything on the network, right?  Nothing is on individual machines.

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@Neilw wrote:

So if I were to consolidate all my shortcuts into a single folder, how should I go about it? 

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I don't know.  We didn't.  We just started setting up new ones in the new way, and I think we're still working on some that are set up the old way. Do you upgrade projects, or keep each one in the same version it started in? I think ideally you would switch over at the same time as moving to a new release; keep old ones as they are in the old release, but new projects started in the new release will be done in the new way.  We switched in the middle of a release, so that can be done too.

[Neilw_05]

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@troma wrote:

Part of that help said:

 This may be useful in situations where multiple users share a project, and the project directory is in different locations on each user’s machine.

Right. Since the shortcut folder is set to each user's machine by default, I was thinking that would be a way to ensure the data get's shared regardless of where it gets stored, but that would present many more issues than it solves.

Since I am the only C3D user I don't have to worry about versions, so I'll upgrade old drawings whenever I need to use them. But you are right to mention that issue. I'll need to address that so we don't get too committed to a bad strategy before implementing company wide.