Associate Pipe Network Catalog to a Drawing

[alderliesteng]

Is there a way to associate a pipe network catalog to a drawing?  I want to avoid relying on users to change thier current pipe network catalog path when switching between projects.  It would be nice if the catalog path would switch automatically after it has been set once for a drawing.  Is that possible?

[Jay_B]

The Pipe Network Catalog isn't a drawing setting but rather a C3d User Profile setting stored in the Registry.

A Best Practice is to Place the Pipe Network Catalog on a read only server where every user is mapped to the same catalog

via the user profile settings. Also best to assign 1 person to be the keeper of the master catalog.

There are a couple of ways to do this, what we do is create ARG profiles which are imported onto all users machines.

[alderliesteng]

Thanks for your response.  However that's not really what I'm asking.  We have our corporate standards catalog (which we manage in the way you describe) but we also have numerous client part catalogs that reside in project folders.  So for some projects we want the path to be:

     T:\cad\discipline\civil\templates\civil_3d\v2013\pipe_network_part_catalogs

And for other projects we want it to be:

     P:\20132320\00\Working_Dwgs\900_Project_Standards ….or something similar

The problem with this is that we have to rely on each user to remember to change thier catalog path whenever they switch projects.

My question is: Is there a way for the catalog path to be set once for a drawing and then automatically switch to that path every time anyone opens it later?

[Jay_B]

I'm not aware of a way to assign it to the dwg.

One way to manage the various cad standards would be to place separate desktop icons on desktop using an appropriate "profile switch" setting the correct profile so the desired catalog is mapped and proper dwt's, etc. depending on the "cad standards" being used on a particular project.

This of course requires exiting c3d and launching using proper icon or the user to switch profiles in options.

If I'm working in a different cad standard from our usual std's, I'm typically using a different profile which finds all necessary items.

[alderliesteng]

Yeah that's exactly what we are doing on our office.  Not all users corporate-wide have the skills to manage profiles though.  I was hoping there might be an easier way.  ...something to add to the wish list.

Thanks for your time.