purpose of data shortcuts?

[Anonymous]

trying to downsize file sizes....I was hoping data shortcuts would allow sharing of design information without being memory intensive....but establishing a topo.dwg and alignment.dwg, the data shortcut doe snot allow align.dwg to access surface for establishing profile by "create by surface" method....it simply does not see data shortcut...

am I missing something...

What is the all intensive purpose for data shortcuts?

[brianzimmerman]

you must be missing something. I always draw profiles in the specific dwg, not in my base plan, therefore I must utilize the data shortcuts. First your drawings that have the project info need to be attached to a project. Then the datashort cuts need to be made. I think you have both of these. Then you need to be in the drawing that you want the shortcuts to be in, go to your projects in the masterveiw of your toolspace and to your data shortcuts, right click on the desired shortcut then select create reference. It will ask you a couple things after that like layer, name, style etc. After that you should be good.

[Anonymous]

.....unfortunately for myself....most of the drawings are so darn corrupt with c3d errors that I was trying to create data shortcuts with.... that data shortcuts wont work properly. I agree with you BZ and took the same approach as you but to no avail., but it was after the fact already knee deep in the project. PUN attended.

[Anonymous]

You do have all of your drawings in the same Civil 3D Project correct?

If so, try creating a new project and attaching the dwgs to it. recreate
your shortcuts and see if they're available then. We had the actual project
go bad on us once and it stopped seeing shortcuts then.

Shawn