Data Shortcut Folder set-up between two offices

[rdisacks]

Hi-

Got a question on the best way to work with data shortcuts between two different offices for a project.

CAD Project folder for Office_A : G:\TEST_PROJECT\Civil\Basefile

CAD Project folder for Office_B:  H:\TEST_PROJECT\Civil\Basefile

...we have been putting the "_Shortcut" folder within the Basefile folder....

However, unfortunately each office CAD directory drive name is different with drives G and H......so if Office A starts off the project then transfers off the basefiles and the shortcuts folder to Office B.....Office B then has to repair the data shortcut paths.....is that normal??

Guessing there is something we could be doing different??? What is the best way to do this?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Jay_B]

I'm not aware of an efficient way to share data shortcuts using different drive letters between offices.

While this is less than ideal it is reality at a lot of shops including our company.

The obvious answer is to get everyone to agree on the benefits of sharing the same project server drive letter.

Vault can help with this problem but from what I've heard presents it's own problems for some organizations.

We try to avoid the headache of re-pathing the data shortcuts whenever possible and a couple of things can be done on certain projects to minimize time spent re-pathing.

Often times the office which will ultimately claim ownership of the project can be identified upfront and then it's fairly easy to use the same drive letter.

As an example my office "office A" is mapped as X:\ and "office B" is mapped as Q:\.

We do happen to agree on the remaining folder structure beyond drive letter company wide for most part. Sounds like that's similar for your scenario.

We then map \\our "office A" server\\ as Q:\ for a project that belongs to or will belong to "office B".

In these cases it becomes a simple copy/paste at the end of each day etc. (with a lot of communication between the design teams in each office).

One person is assigned as the data keeper in cases where both offices are simultaneously working on the project.

With this approach the data is in 2 places at times but we're also not working over a painfully slow WAN.

Hopefully others have some better suggestions but that's how we've dealt with it here.

[doni49]

Maybe you could consider setting up an "extra" server in each office.  The "extra" server in office a would simply be a mirror of the Office B server and vice-versa.  Besides helping with the issue at hand, this would also provide an off-site backup of the data which is never a bad idea.

Having done that, while working in office b map H drive to the Office A mirror.  Now you can reference files from office A using drive G. 

When Office A is working on their files, they are actively working on the G drive which is mapped to their main server.  Office A maps drive H to the Office B mirror.  Now office A can reference files from Office B using drive H.

The mirroring of the data could be done automatically at night but if something on a particualr project needs updated manually during the day, that could be done too as long as all parties close the files.

And with this workflow, you're all referencing local data which helps with speed.

[doni49]

P.S. We had a similar setup at my previous job.  There was about 60 miles between the two offices and we had a VPN tunnel connecting them.

[Hammer.john.j]

There is a point where you will have to decide if this different drive philosophy is more or less work than the programming required behind the scenes to resolve this problem.  We found it easier, to get everyone on the same mapped drives... and be advised, just because you fix the mapped drives doesn't necessarily means you fixed it all, some stuff is UNC no matter what you do, cough cough cough sheetset manager.

[GTVic]

Hope it is okay if I revive this question.

Are you able to reference all items (data shortcuts, xrefs, etc) via UNC pathnames. I'm wondering if that is workable in Civil 3D?

UNC: \\server\share\folder

Also, I'm wondering if anyone has tried symbolic links as in the example below.

Now "C:\Civil 3D Projects" maps to a network folder and can be changed at will.

[Neilw_05]

As suggested by others, if you have muultiple offices that need to work together, a replicating appliance is a good solution. Thereplicator syncs thefiles in real timeso both offices are using te same drives and data but the files are local.

[mathewkol]

One way you should be able to work with the different drive letters is to use the Project functionality present within the Options dialog, Files tab, Project section.

[amy.finbow]

I am currently working on VPN and am finding it very slow on drawings with shortcuts. So, I was wondering if it is easy enough to mirror the working folder location for the data shortcut files locally to speed things up.... Has anyone done this and have you encountered any problems with it?