Catalogs and Tool Palettes

[mike.belmont]

OK... Enough already - I say uncle.  

We are a small firm.   2 seats.   I do the cad manager stuff occassionally.  It seems like this is way too complicated anymore.   

I am doing what I am sure thousands of other cad managers have been doing across the world, and I am simply pulling my hair out.

I recently sat down at my desk, put together a bunch of tool palletes, dragged them to our company catalog (where we keep other similarly created palletes).  Now, I haven't created many new palettes recently.  It was probably ACA 2009 when I created the bulk of what we use now.    In the past, when I did create them, I would create the palette, copy them over to the catalog, delete them locally, then pull them back in.   These new palletes don't work correctly when pulled into a different machine on the network.

FWIW - These new palettes work great on the machine that they were created on.

The tool palettes get pulled in, they look great with the correct icons, but when the user selects the tool they get a "style not found error".  The error makes sense, as the tools do not include the path to the style that was present when they were created.   (which for what it's worth *IS* present when they get pulled into the machine that they were created on)

Details:

Palettes were created on an aca ACA 2011 machine.   (CompA)

Tool palette file path on (CompA) was set to local location when these palettes were created

Added Tool Palette file path to network location - no change

Trying to pull the palettes from the catalog into ACA 2012 machine (CompB)

Tool palette file path on (CompB) was set to local path also (which is surprising because other tool palettes pulled in from the catalog work on that machine)

Tool palette file path changed to network location - no change

I have looked at the atc files with an xml editor.    many of the "style" locations reference a variable called %AECCONTENT_DIR%\    I figure that's the issue here, but can't seem to track down what atc file is calling what atc file is calling what atc file, etc.

can someone please give me some insight as to what the rules are when creating palettes to be stored on the network?   I assume since the tool pallete path was set to a local location on the machine that the palettes were created on, that's why they have the %AECCONTENT_DIR% VARIABLE?

What should the file structure look like on the network?    There have been so many changes in file structure over the years, that I am not sure what I can delete and what I can't.

Is there a way to edit the atc files that are already created and have been relocated to the network to edit the paths correctly (btw - I have tried this without success, but I don't know if I have edited the correct atc fles)

We would like to ultimately have a scenario where all default OOTB content is stored locally on the machines, and any altered content is stored on the network and can be pulled in and updated from a catalog.   Seems like that should be no problem.   

Hopefully I am not rambling too much.   I just need some guidance on how to created these correctly - so that others can use them.

-Mike Belmont

[David_W_Koch]

When you created the tools on your computer, were the source files with the content from which the tools were generated on the network, in a location that the second machine can see and access via the same network path/address as the first machine?  Are those files still in that location?

[mike.belmont]

yes, all content is on the network and all machines routinely access the network location.   

-Mike

[arcitek]

was this ever resolved?  I am trying to find solutions to htis problem or get some help somewhere but it has been unsuccessful.