Any Reason to Keep LDD Files?

[CyberAngel]

They want me to archive some old projects, put together with the old Land Desktop system. There are bunches of folders and files that are probably useless, but I want to check with the forum before I start deleting them all.

 

Here are my rules of thumb.

In the Align folder, if there are named folders, they contain alignment data.

In the Cogo folder, if points.mdb is bigger than 50KB, it has some point data.

In the DTM folder, if there are named folders, they contain surface data.

In the dwg folder, there should be drawings, otherwise the rest of the data is useless. dfm and cgx files are not important enough to keep, especially if the drawing that corresponds to them is gone.

Bottom line: if the dwg folder has no dwgs, it should be safe, even necessary, to delete the entire project structure.

 

What am I missing, if anything?

[sinc]

How are you archiving the data? Does it really make enough difference to warrant trying to purge that stuff out of there? Why not just archive everything, rather than run the risk of accidentally deleting that one thing you may need to open up the archive in search of?

[CyberAngel]

I tried to catalog all the filing quirks of the person who set up these projects originally. The site made me log in again and it's gone. Suffice it to say there's a lot of crap that is obviously crap, but I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's easy enough to re-create surfaces, for instance, and I wouldn't want to spend all day looking through empty folders.

[BlackBox]

Land Desktop doesn't just create crap files on it's own... users do that.

 

I do not know what setup you are having to contend with, but I agree with Sinc here, don't run the risk. Out of several GB's of data (an arbitrary amount), what are you saving yourself in data size... a few 100 MB's?

 

Not to mention how much time you'll have to spend culling each and every project for what you believe to be crap files!? How much overhead is that going to cost?

 

IMO - Zip the projects (individually), and archive.

[CyberAngel]

Example: every project has a folder called zz. In that folder is a file named locale.dat. I've never seen a project where the locale.dat file has a date past the project's creation date, i.e. it's never used. Soon enough they'll stop supporting LDD, we'll stop using it, so why keep these files?

 

Right now things are slow. This is basically a makework, back-burner project. Most of these projects are less than 100 MB for everything: drawings, email, correspondence. It doesn't take that long to sift through one project and prune out the crap, maybe an hour on average.

 

Someday someone (maybe even me) could have to pull out one of these projects. Typically that data is needed PDQ. I'd rather spend time now pruning than spend it later digging.

[BlackBox]

I understand the need to 'make work' ... and given the relatively small size of your projects (in total), you're right, it won't take that long. But to be clear, if you're projects work now, they're going to work in the future (based on the data you have). Technically speaking, there's no 'need' to do what you asking.

 

The reason for my original perspective, is that by comparison, doing what you want for my projects would be an absolute nightmare.

 

For example, just our active transportation projects alone take up +20 GB disk space, not including incremental project submittals that have been archived ... and that's just for my office (1 of many).

[sinc]

The zz directory is created automatically by Land Desktop.

 

I'd say that if you're looking for something to do, you're likely to get a lot more value out of taking one of your old projects and redoing it in Civil 3D, so you can learn more about how to use C3D. I've been using C3D for four years now, and I'm still learning stuff. But the more I use it, the faster I get, and the better I am at getting it to do what I want. I suppose it depends on the work you do, how big a mess the existing files are, and how often you need to dig through archives. But for most people, learning more about how to control C3D would be a lot more valuable than spending all that time sorting through archived projects, just on the off-chance someone wants to look in the project for something...

[BIGAL]

We pull data out that was done in the 80's thank god they saved it, it takes 3 steps but we can still use the original field survey data.

 

How cheap is a DVD now 2.5Gb our 80's job we measured in Kb not Mb no way Gb un heard of.

 

moral of the story save everything junk or otherwise if not sure.

[CyberAngel]

you're likely to get a lot more value out of taking one of your old projects and redoing it in Civil 3D, so you can learn more about how to use C3D.

 

That's a great idea! Practice makes perfect.

[sinc]

It also give you a chance to work on your template. Each time you create a new Style, make sure you get it into your template. A key part of being able to work fast with C3D is having a good template, with all the Styles you need pre-created.

[Kurt]

Delete them, I run a file search through explorer and delete all the crap files LDD created.  A project can consist of 60 extra files that can slow down a server or even DVD search when in mass quantity.  I love that C3D embeds everything now so no more purging out the useless stuff.