OneDrive and Sharepoint Syncing Issues

[harliY432P]

Hi All,

Any time an ACAD file is saved to a one drive synced folder, the entire syncing process halts with the error: "This file is in use by a another program and cannot be synced". Investigating further it is the 3 files (DWG, DWL and DWL2) that are holding things up. 

This is causing delays in the company when say one person is working on an autocad file and needs to see/sync an excel document that someone else saved to the cloud. The ACAD user needs to close the DWG file before syncing resumes.

1. Any ideas or workarounds?

2. I understand that ACAD no longer creates lock files so why is this happening?

Thanks

[pendean]

AutoCAD is not quite OneDrive or SharePoint compatible: so those platform errors cannot be addressed from inside AutoCAD.

Did you all just start using OneDrive or syncing within it? or just start using SharePoint?

[rkmcswain]

@pendean wrote:
AutoCAD is not quite OneDrive or SharePoint compatible: so those platform errors cannot be addressed from inside AutoCAD.

I would generally agree that this is not a good idea, but they did announce this recently.

[rkmcswain]

@harliY432P wrote:
Investigating further it is the 3 files (DWG, DWL and DWL2) that are holding things up. 

2. I understand that ACAD no longer creates lock files so why is this happening?

AutoCAD hasn't created lock files in over 20 years. The operating system creates and maintains the 'locks'. .DWL and .DWL2 files are NOT lock files. They simply exist so that the WHOHAS command knows who has the file open. They can be left behind if AutoCAD crashes, but their presence does nothing to "lock" the DWG file.

[pendean]

How I read it when that came out as...

"...The DWG file opens from SharePoint or OneDrive into the AutoCAD web app (web.autocad.com)..." and not much else really. Same as their similar announcement doing the same with DropBox.

I'm not sure they meant much more but I can wait and see how all of this shakes out.

Thanks for sharing the link.

[Anonymous]

I would suggest you try unlinking your account in OneDrive for Business settings then re-add your account to see if the problem still persists. Also, please try removing the file from your OneDrive sync folder, then upload the file to OneDrive for Business website.

Moreover, would you please confirm whether the problem only happen to this file or all the files in the OneDrive sync folder?

Regards,

Adrian

[dmpe]

We added acad files to our Onedrive and sharepoint storage structure about a year ago and this problem still occurs.  It occurs always when one has an autocad file open, and slows/stops other uploads from occurring which can then occasionally back up enough to send the onedrive syncing into an endless loop of trying to sync.  At that point, we've generally had to unsync the onedrive then go in and resync to jump start it again. 

Anyway, any update from Autodesk regarding this?  It seems like kind of a big deal and something a company of this size should be able to work through fixing.

[AlThorp]

This is a problem for me as well.  OneDrive is generally very good solution for me, but this one little pesky issue is certainly a problem!  I would love to get a proper solution implemented.

[pendean]

There is no solution yet from Autodesk or Microsoft.

[Shrestl]

We do have an article that states this issue for OneDrive and Sharepoint:  Autodesk support for non-Microsoft networks.  I found that I would save my files onto my desktop and when I was done I would upload them back up.  I would also rename the one drive dwg. as my initial at the end so people knew I was working on it.  I noticed that OneDrive and Sharepoint do not respect the dwg locks as well and will let people edit while you are working making it the rule 'he who saves last wins' write over of the dwgs.

[Anonymous]

I've been following this ever since the announcement. It seems to be more of an integration with the webapp and to share in a read-only scenario. But DWLs are still left out. Which for a company that utilizes the project manager its still a bummer. 

This link says "yeah we support it but not the way you really want it": 

 https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-do...

[fran]

has this issue ever been addressed. we are having these sync issued with Sharepoint. files keep disappearing and reappearing then lost etc. Sharepoint and Autocad seem incompatible.

[harliY432P]

Our issue was more to do with the one-drive application stopping to sync when an AutoCAD drawing that is saved on a SP site is open. This hasn't been resolved.
In terms of files going missing, I suggest you do an audit trail on the file through the sharepoint admin centre (or ask your IT department to do so).

[dmpe]

I agree with Harli, still an issue.

There was a point recently where we were noticing that if one of us had a dwg file open, it would disappear from the Explorer folder for others (others would not see it). however, that isn't happening anymore.  I did recently unlink my sharepoint, delete my onedrive from hard drive (after verifying everything was uploaded in cloud) and then reinstalled/syned onedrive/sharepoint.  I was having the "stuck processing" issue on Sharepoint, which the clean install fixed, but may also have fixed the disappearing issue.

[cnewmanM6KE7]

The file disappearing is a good (and bad) thing, a way to keep multiple users out of a single file. However, it is not consistent. We still have issues with multiple users accessing a file. To take it a step further, in using Revit, if a user has a file open and that file is linked into another Revit model, the link will show as "not found" (when the file "disappears") and you can't reroute the link, because you can't see the file when someone has it opened. So I'm really needing both sides of this resolved. 

[jmcbride]

Hi,

So can you have OneDrive ignore the DWL and DWL2 files and still have full functionality of AutoCAD?  what would I lose if I had OneDrive ignore those files? No recovery if you crash? 

[james_salter]

You might check with your IT department, as you may be able to have them remove .DWL and DWL2 files from the list of filetypes that are detected and backed up thru OneDrive / SharePoint.   Check out this article from Microsoft:  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/block-file-types