AutoCAD Civil Projects and remote files

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Hello,

First, I'd like to thank everyone on this forum for helping me out on my road to AutoCAD Civil discovery. While its been my second day, I think I've ran into every newbie problem known to AutoCAD. All I can say is thank this forum and its people for asnwering questions and search engines for linking me to these answers 🙂

The project I am working on is trying to figure out what common operations generate the most network traffic given a situation where all projects, references, etc., are all located half-way across the world. My hope is to try and characterize these operations and translate these operations to time spent waiting for these operations to complete. So far, outside of opening projects and saving projects, I haven't come to the conclusion which other CAD/Civil operations would contribute to a file or project's size. 

What I've been doing is so far is modifying existing projects (by modify I mean adding break lines, maybe changing some object parameters here and there) and, while the file/project size does change, its not really that much. 

So, in the essence of saving some time on my part, if you could help me out figure out what operations that I need to do to grow a project size. I suspect this isn't an easy task and most likely requires a lot of work on my part but I was hoping the experts here may know how to answer this for me as I am much too new.

Alex

ps: Does the rebuilding operation immediately access disk or is that all CPU up until you save the project?

[Neilw_05]

I can't offer much help about how operations impact a network but I am wondering if you have considered some sort of replicating appliance. That would allow you to work with local data while the replicator synchronizes it with the main data store with minimal impact on your work.

[sboon]

At a guess the highest volume of traffic between the remote location hosting the files and the temp directory of the local computer would happen during a large surface rebuild, or creating a point cloud.  All of that remote data has to be copied to the local system to build the temporary files used to develop the TIN.  If I wanted to use the most inefficient source file possible for a surface then I'd probably use an xml file.

If the surface is large enough to require an mms file then all of that data has to be copied back to the remote file location also.

Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate

[kcobabe]

Sounds like you need to invest in Buzzsaw or Projectwise.  I prefer projectwise because if the user, designer, and drafters know what they are doing Civil 3D works very well with it.

I work in a large company where we see projects all over the globe.  We use projectwise and sharepoint mainly with a couple clients that use buzzsaw.

Projectwise: (http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/ProjectWise+project+team+collaboration/?skid=CT_REF_DOM_PROJEC...)

Pros:

-Works well in large groups

-Drawing check out is a sinch

-Document control is great

-For the most part it integrates with C3D very well

Cons:

-If the users do not know what they are doing it can become a mess fast

-You need to have someone one on the back end that knows there stuff (We have an entire department that caters to this program)

-Drawings are local when work is being done.  So you must atleast update the server copy for people to see the changes.

-Need your own local server

Sharepoint: (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/)

Pros:

-You can add it to your system like a regular drive.

-Because you can add it like a drive, all those shortcuts and files come accross with no problem so long as everyone maps to the same drive letter.

-Believe it or not DOD allows you to store anything that is no classified here.  Then again DOD, DOE, etc.. all require you to be disconnected from the internet when working on their classified stuff too.

Cons:

-You need to remember to login on the first use of the day

-Server is owned by Microsoft

Buzzsaw: (http://www.autodesk.com/products/buzzsaw/overview)

Pros:

-Native to Autodesk products, so should work well with C3D

-Giving clients and subs access is usually pretty simple

-This is where Vault went 😉

Cons:

-I have not found many yet, but then again I hardly use the thing

Short of building your own FTP or server, these I would assume, are your best options.  I have a couple side project clients that use dropbox as well.

As for speed, I think buzzsaw and sharepoint are your best options.  Projectwise can be pretty dang expensive to get running, operate, and maintain.  I think other than that it comes down to what speed you can afford for your internet service and how good the service is inbetween.

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Hi Folks -

Thank you for all the responses!

I probably should elaborate a bit more on what I'm doing. Basically, I'm using a WAN optimization device to access all-things AutoCAD Civil 3D. The hopes is that using Windows file shares should suffice when accessing projects across the WAN. Also, the hope of managing large projects and files with shares is easier than using something like Sharepoint or Buzzsaw. Ideally, the need for things like local storage devices (and replication licenses) and additional file management systems can be avoided in favor of more traditional methods like file shares.

@Neilw - having a storage device at the branch and replicating it back to the data center is what I'm hoping we could avoid. The idea is that with WAN optimization and application-level acceleration that the need of having storage at remote offices can be avoided. I suspect that most admins prefer to have all data at the data center, mainly for control, security and protection reasons.

 - Is redirecting temp to a share something that is typically done?

 - whew, I'm having a tough time trying to learn Civil 3D, I can't imagine taking on Buzzaw/Projectwise on top 🙂

In general, how large can these Civil 3D projects get? In the training videos, the training content shows projects being 6MB; I'm guessing this is incorrect considering the amount of detail that is produced by pro AutoCAD folks, such as yourselves.

Well, I'm putzing along the training video and hopefully I can perform some of the operations described in this thread. 

Alex