Vault or Shortcuts, You Decide

First things first. I have slapped my hand because I have not blogged in almost 3 months. Shame on me. I think I just got into a rut and had a little writer's block. So, with the next edition of our bi-monthly Alacad newsletter coming out in a few days I felt that writer's block or not I needed to get something posted.

Since I began working with Civil 3D with the 2006 release and I learned about Vault I have been a proponent of using Vault to store my projects. In fact, I convinced the Civil Department at my previous employer to try Vault. I even talked the IT Department into giving me a dedicated server for my Vault database and filestore. I still have a local install on my laptop for work that I use occasionally. Notice here that I said occasionally.

I am not as big a proponent of Vault as I used to be. Why? Good question. When I first started using Vault it was me, myself and I. I had full control of how my projects were set up and I knew what files I should keep or delete. I was the only one working in Civil 3D and storing files in the Vault. Life was good. Then we hired a new draftsman. Teaching him to use the Vault was not as easy. I also considerably more data to manage because there were two Vaulters now.

One of the things that I loved about Vault at the time was that I could create references to my data without having to do a whole lot. When I checked a drawing into the Vault, I was prompted to add the shortcuts or not. I typically created the shortcuts as needed and on occasion I would create all of the shortcuts, just in case I needed the information down the road. So, now you may be asking, "What data can I make Vault Shortcuts out of?" That list would include surfaces, alignments, pipe networks, etc. Again, life wasn't too bad at this point, but I did find myself using a lot more of my time trying to manage the data in my Vault.

So, I decided to try using the data shortcuts and references for a while. I could create the data shortcuts and store them in our project folder. This began to create a few issues. I had to store the data shortcuts in the project folder on our server, not on my local machine. This wasn't that big of a deal until I needed to take my computer home to work on a particular project. When I got home all I was able to see was a "Broken Reference." Now I am at home trying to be productive and I can't complete the tasks that I needed to complete that night. (we didn't have a VPN server at the time.)

Then I left for Alacad. I still had a few loose ends to tie up, so I continued using the same methodology for creating the shortcuts. I tried to keep them in the Project folder on my hard drive, so that when I took the projects back to the old company there would be no issues with the shortcuts. This was all fine and good until the project folder was moved to the file server and BAM!!!! All of the references were broken again.

Then I started working with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009. Man, what a difference. The folks at Autodesk gave us some tools in 2009 that are second to none. Now I have a Project Template that reminds me a lot of the file structure in Land Desktop, so there was a familiarity there. they also gave us a program called Data Shortcuts Editor. This is the tool that I had been looking for! Now, if my Data Shortcuts get moved to a different location I can use the Data Shortcuts Editor to "remap" the location of the shortcuts and all is well with my drawing file. I can use the Find and Replace tool to find the Shortcuts' original location on my hard drive or server and replace that address with the new address and update my drawing file!

So, now that I have finished my narrative on using both vault references and data shortcuts, I'll challenge you to give them a try and see which works best for you. Until next time.