EPD and drawing revisions

[tkendrick]

How do you handle creating drawing revisions using either Save As or file copy to maintain a version history of your drawings.

Example: I have a project with multiple files for multiple floors of the same building, all of which reference 1 EPD for the building. I am at the point where the submittals are final and I want to create an archival set of files and setup a new copy of files to finalize the drawings. This way as revisions are made I don't have to re-draw things from the past if the customer decides to go back a version.

Since the EPD doesn't like being re-pathed without loosing some connections, how does copying or Save As affect the EPD?

Is there any way to do what I described above for maintaining old versions?

Is file copy or Save As the ideal process, or is there a different method suggested?

Would using eTransmit be a solution to maintaining EPD connections and creating an archive/revision set?

[Martin__Schmid]

Assuming your path to the EPD is relative, you can simply copy the existing file structure to create a parallel independet 'version'.

[tkendrick]

I did as suggested, and here is what I found. For safety I created a copy of the EPD in use.

When I opened the new version, I received the warning about a file could not be located. Even though the EPD path to the drawing is relative. The EPD must also store the path back to the drawing. So my new set is a different path than the old. I chose not to remove from DB at that time. Mainly because it's not clear what you are removing, the drawing you are trying to open or the old path to the old drawing (the tooltip balloon didn't show the complete path). By not removing the old file I ended up with duplicate data in the EPD, which I figured out from the circuit loads.

I have the EPD stored separate to my drawing files, and the way my file structure works, new versions of drawings have the same relative path out to the EPD.

So it seems the process should go as follows:

Make copies of the drawing files

Make a copy of the EPD to use for the old version (any copies of the EPD would need to be renamed for use in prior versions)

When opening the new versions Chose to Remove the data from the EPD

As I write, it occurs to me that storing the EPD in the same folder at the drawings themselves might solve this copy process.