Best practice for Civil 3D data shorcuts

[Jeew-m]

Hi All,
When we are doing a project using data shortcuts, we share our corridor surfaces with others (Say with a person doing stormwater).

At some point if I need to turn off a corridor (For ease of work or increase dwg speed), it might affect other person.  

What would be the best practice in this scenario.

[m_kingdon]

I think the simplest workflow would be to not turn off the corridor if possible.  Are the corridors causing a significant lag in your drawings?

[Jeew-m]

Hi Kindon,
Thank you for your suggestion. I sometimes turn off corridors for better visual and it is particularly difficult when working in remote servers where I usually turn off some of the stuff.

I know I can freeze corridors instead turn off them.

[AdammReilly · Accepted solution]

How do you mean turn off or freeze? Are you doing this by turning off or freezing the layer the corridor is on? If so, turning it off doesn't actually change the speed of things because items on layers that are turned off are still regenerated, just not visible. Freezing the layer would affect this better.

But I'm also wondering about how this would affect another user? If you're in a file, using your storm example, and have a reference to the corridor, then the storm designer can manipulate the display of the corridor as they see fit for their design. Unless you're also in that file making changes when they're not, there wouldn't be an issue. If you're in the corridor and making changes, that would affect the storm designer who needs to synchronize your changes. Turning layers on and off in the corridor file won't affect them, only changes to the actual object.

But back to your original question of best practice:

Data shortcut anything you need the DATA for. If you're in the storm file and you need to see the corridor subassembly sections in your design profile, then data reference it in. If you're only concerned about the top of the grading and have a default minimum depth from there, then you don't need the corridor, you just need the surface and you can generate a 'minimum cover' surface, using your design surface and an elevation drop. These would be added to the profile to design against.

If you don't need the data for an object, an xref will suffice. Especially since you can label through an xref, this will let you extract some data without having to have it directly in your file too.

[AllenJessup]

Same question about turning off a Corridor. Are you setting the Style to No-Display? That wouldn't affect another drawing with the Corridor as a DRef. Also for stormwater. Wouldn't the person need the finished Corridor Surface? Not the Corridor itself.

[claimed4all · Accepted solution]

Does everyone have their Working Folder set correctly?

We have a few large files.  Engineering will be in the Utility or Grading files, working about as needed.  Someone in our planning department may open our layout file, that file sometimes houses our center line alignments and its data shortcutted out.  Our planning team typically does not deal with data shortcuts, and if their working file is wrong, it will bring the Engineers drawing to a standstill.  Even if our planning employee opens the layout read only, it will still causes significant delays in our engineers file he is working in.  This only happens on a few large jobs.  If we walk over to the planning persons desk, have them change their working file to the correct path, it immediately fixes everything.

I find it odd on the few projects I work on.  As I only worry about my working folder setting up a data shortcut and a reference, after that, if I switch to a job with existing shortcuts, I do not need to change my working folder, no delay.  I have tried to problem solve the few drawings we have the issues in, but no successes  I have given up on those few projects.

[RobertEVs · Accepted solution]

Couple things. Other workers do not see any changes unless you save your work. 

Second if you want better visualization why not swap your corridor to a code set style of Top links only. I toggle between a CSS of DESIGN and No-Links that shows only my crown and a daylight line with zero links across the corridor. Very quick this way

[Jeew-m]

Thank you everyone for your wonderful suggestions. 
I know freezing does not make the file faster, but I just do it for visual purpose so that I see the other things properly. I agree with the link only with code set style, which makes things better.

As a workaround in my case, I have 2 files, one is the working file the other is the file that goes to data shortcuts.

Whenever I do updates, I overwrite the data shortcut file with my updated working file.