Managing drawings over 2 servers

[feargt]

Hi,

We have an issue in our office, we will be working on a project together with another office of the same company over 2 servers. The issue is where do we keep the drawings? Ideally all the drawings would be saved on the 1 server and people would just open the drawings from here and edit and save them again. But unfortunately this is too time consuming for the technicians working from the other office. This problem was experienced on another project that I was not involved in and ended up being very messy. Drawings were being copied from 1 server to another and after making changes were copied back. This created all sorts of problems.

Unfortunately both offices need to able to access and be able to edit ALL the drawings.

Does anyone have similar work issues and how do they deal with it?

thanks

[dbroada]

Nightmare!

On a couple of projects we have the master drawings in the UK. The US office is meant to request changes through us and not change the duplicate set (don't ask why the have dwg files - politics is the only reply) but somehow their drawings are often not in line with ours. Even worse is that they don't up-rev the changes!

If everyone can be trusted you could create an excel file to "log out" drawings you are working on but if people can't be trusted you have a problem.

[Raggi_Thor]

I made a simple solution for a similar project a few years ago. Dwg files where stored on two servers, for now I call them HERE and THERE.
We used VBA in AutoCAD to do the following:

1) OPEN = Our own open routine, check dates on this file HERE and THERE, if it's newer over THERE, copy it to HERE and then open. Lock thie file on THERE.

2) For each Xref in Dwg, check the dates, copy files if necessary, and reload.

3) CLOSE = Copy file from HERE to THERE. Unlock.

[Raggi_Thor]

Nightmare!

...

If everyone can be trusted you could create an excel file to "log out" drawings you are working on but if people can't be trusted you have a problem.

Since people in general can't be trusted, et least not all of them all the time, I would take a look at some of the "Check in / Check out" document management systems on the market.
I sell Vondle from Bricsys as an online project server, and M-Files as a "in house" (on your own server) solution.
There area many, many solutions here.
Conisio was easy to work with, I think.
Autodesk made me sell WorkCenter and then discontinued it.
Automanager Workflow is it still there?
Meridian?

What about Autodesk Vault?
Do you get that without buying Inventor?

[dbroada]

Since people in general can't be trusted, et least not all of them all the time,

What about Autodesk Vault?
Do you get that without buying Inventor?

Its not really a problem for us as we are the design authority so consider the files on our server to be the master ones. We ignore anything the other sites do unless it has come through the design authority ite anyway.

We don't have vault but I think it is available to us as we are on subscription. However when I last looked it didn't fit within our work flow without major changes. Since our method works there didn't seem any point in looking deeper.

[Raggi_Thor]

Maybe feargt could use a document management system?

[feargt]

Maybe feargt could use a document management system?

thanks for all the comments and advice so far.


maybe he could but first I will look at the autodesk vault option, we have that but we do not use it as has not been neceesary.

Your first suggestion is also something worth thinking about. But if I am using sheet set manager this this may pose problems.

I am in the position where I have to try and come up with a workable solution by next week. Working with one master set of drawings would be the ideal situation for us though.

As was said earlier, the big problem is that not everyone can be trusted..........

[Raggi_Thor]

Sorry if we type too much now

What I like with most Check in/out systems is that they give you a local working directory, on your own computer. So you open very fast if nothing has changed since last time.

What I often don't like is that you have to enter document properties again, sometimes there is no link to title blocks.

[feargt]

Sorry if we type too much now

What I like with most Check in/out systems is that they give you a local working directory, on your own computer. So you open very fast if nothing has changed since last time.

What I often don't like is that you have to enter document properties again, sometimes there is no link to title blocks.

am very interested to hear what other people use or do in this situation or there opinions based on experiences