Xref behavior on AutoDesk Construction Cloud

[J.Cline]

Hello!  

Our office is making a transition to put all production on Autodesk Construction Cloud (Docs).  We've been using ACC for Revit for some time, with good results.  

AutoCAD is still relevant on some projects, although it is certainly a minority, there is little chance it will completely go away, so in some form we need to be able to work on the cloud within AutoCAD. 

I have been experimenting with this on some projects and there is one behavior that on the surface sounds like a good Idea, but in execution it will become a significant problem... and that is how AutoCAD on the cloud handles XREFs.

To explain, when you save a DWG to the cloud for the first time, and if that drawing has XREFs... which naturally most drawings have one or (many) more, it will try to help, and it will pull all these XREFs to the cloud for you.  The first time I saw that behavior I kind of thought it was a neat Idea, until I fully realized what it was doing.  It was actually recreating an entire directory and sub-directory structure, mimicing our internal network path for this cad file.  Very very quickly, the cloud home for this project was innundated with a significant amount of subdirectory structures that have no use.  

You have to navigate down these re-created folders, and move the XREF DWG out of the folder and back up the chain to put it where it needs to go.  

Has anyone else used AutoCAD on ACC, and have a similar experience?  Do you know how to stop AutoCAD, or AutoDesk Desktop Connector or the cloud itself... ( I don't know which program is actually responsible for creating this mess) from helping? 

This was one user, (me), dealing with this, and found it was quickly turning into a forest of useless folders.  Once our office goes live with AutoCAD on ACC, we will have many more instances of this occurring.  Now imagine an office with a buch of people working in AutoCAD... this feature will explode a thousand folders, where someone is going to need to fish out the DWG, put it where it needs to go, then when it happens again, figure out if it pulled old data, whether it needs to be deleted, or what... man this is going to be tough to manage.  

All it needs to do is... stop helping.  Where is the toggle to turn this feature off?  If I want a DWG on the cloud, I will put it there, and in the folder I want it in, thank you very much, this 'helpful' feature is creating a ton of time wasting effort. 

Thank you!

[KPerison]

Refer to this article.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/bim-360/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Migratin...

It refers to Civil3D, but the concept is the same for basic AutoCAD.  The files need to be consolidated and cleaned up prior to upload into ACC. 

The intent of ACC is to start in ACC and keep it in ACC.  However, some legacy data does eventually need to be imported.

If doing this process manually I suggest e-transmitting the files to consolidate into a zip file. Extract it and make sure all files are in the same folder.  Follow the instructions in the article regarding xref pathing.  Then drag the ifles or folder into ACC. Once in ACC then you can start moving your xrefs around as required.

The 2nd option is to use the "Data Migration Tool" .  It is in Beta, but we have used it to great success for our C3D projects.

[J.Cline]

Thank you very much for your response and solution options.

I agree, once we are set up on the cloud, this is going to become much less or really a non-issue, and your suggestions may well be the best way to handle this.  Our specific situation is that our internal network is going to get taken down (this is planned in the not to distant future) and we will be all cloud based.  The transition to put existing projects on the cloud is going to be kind of a nightmare, and I am looking for the best way to migrate them.    

When I have a chance to test this out, I will let you know here how it went!

Thanks again!