Do you promote pipe networks?

[randyspear6624]

General question to see what others are doing...

Do you promote your pipe networks at a certain point in a project to simplify things? I've always worked with drefs on large and small jobs. I know some people don't use them on small jobs but I always have for security reasons. Even on the jobs where I'm the draftsman and designer I still use them because C3D dwgs always seem to become unstable at a certain point in their lifespan so it's less data that I'll be less likely to have to deal with at some level.

Anyways, for the people that are using them on small projects, are you promoting them at some point when the pipe design is closer to 100%?

[Jeff_M]

No. The only time I've promoted any Dref object is when I'm troubleshooting a synch issue or sending a dwg file to someone.

[randyspear6624]

And you're ok with toggling between dwg's and constantly synchronizing? (our dwgs take minutes to sync and are just plain slow to toggle back and forth) I've been accepting the slow performance for years but now I just simply have no patience left.
Thanks for the reply by the way.

[Jeff_M]

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@randyspear6624 wrote:
And you're ok with toggling between dwg's and constantly synchronizing? (our dwgs take minutes to sync and are just plain slow to toggle back and forth) I've been accepting the slow performance for years but now I just simply have no patience left.
Thanks for the reply by the way.

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Yep, beats the heck out of having to make a last minute change and forgetting that it needs to be done in multiple drawings. I try to always have something else going so I can multitask whilst the synch's occur. 

You're welcome. And yes, I know that waiting can be frustrating, but it's still far better/faster, in the grand scheme of things, than any system I've used before.

[randyspear6624]

I see... I work a little differently.  I have separate working/design files that host the c3d objects. They are really only dref'd into one civil 3d production plan that others xref (this file usually ends up being my actual alignment/profile file because of the linetype limitations with dref'd profiles). So when I say I'm promoting them, I'm not doing it multiple files. In otherwords, I'm simply moving the data to a more convenient location and archiving the initial design file.

I wish I could work similar to you and just provide the raw data for others to use but we don't have very many c3d users and we work closely with other disciplines who are definitely not about to start using civil 3d.