>> I know disk space is almost free
That's a bad assumption. Unfortunately, Autodesk seems to be making it, too. We have off-site backups, and we have to pay a per-GB charge for this. So we really don't like this whole "disk space is free" assumption.
As with others, we are using only a single template, because of all the difficulty with keeping multiple templates synchronized, and making sure all changes get made in all the appropriate templates.
But this whole thing about having our entire block library inside of every drawing has really blown up the disk size. Our file template is now 1MB, and that's a completely empty file with nothing in it. That means every single C3D drawing we create is at least 1MB in size.
Now throw in Vault, which basically keeps a lot of copies of every drawing, and it gets much worse.
Actually, the entire Vault premise completely falls apart when taken in conjunction with off-site backups. When we are backing up individual files, everything is fine. The backup routine can check datestamps, and only backup files that need to be backed up. But if we had to do everything all at once, it takes roughly 16 hours to do a complete transfer of all our current files over our T1 connection. So if we were to put everything into Vault, the entire Vault would need to be backed up every day, and there flat-out aren't enough hours in the day for that. And getting a T3 just to handle backups is prohibitive, as far as cost.
That's the situation BEFORE we take into account the fact that Vault maintains potentially many copies of every drawing. The problem actually gets far worse when Vault is involved, because of the rate that Vault eats disk space. If we try to reduce the problem by constantly purging the Vault every day to keep the file size down, we are completely wasting the whole point of even using Vault in the first place. We'd be far better off with something that merely handled the model-data access aspect without forcing us to do all that obnoxious checkin/checkout stuff - e.g., an application server - in place of the clunky Vault. And purging doesn't even help - even a fully-purged Vault would take over 16 hours to backup, if it contains all our current files, and that's unworkable. And it will only get worse as our company grows, and we get more projects.
However, if we try to use a handful Vaults to get around THIS issue, we run into others. For example, using three Vaults ends up with basically the same problem - if we edit one project in Vault 1, one project in Vault 2, and one in Vault 3, all on the same day, then all three would need to be backed up, and we hit the prohibitive transfer again. So we basically hit the point where every project needs its own Vault, so editing one project doesn't force a whole bunch of unrelated projects to also be backed up, simply because they are in the same Vault.
But if we create one Vault for every project, then we are using Vault in a way that it was not intended, and we have workflow issues in C3D. We also have an administrative headache.
But I digress again. The Vault is such a royal pain, I guess it's easy to get off on that tangent. But let's get back to the regularly-scheduled programming now...
Yeah, we too only use a single template.
Sinc
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