Referencing DWGs with Vectorworks Project Sharing

[Isaac Anderson]

Hi All,

 

My colleagues and I have been having issues with VWX2024, Referenced DWGs, and Project Sharing. We are a 3-person team running project sharing, with the master and working files hosted on a fast and seemingly reliably dropbox folder, autosyncing to our finder's. We have been troubled by an issue involving referenced DWGs from our architect. If one user imports a DWG as a reference (either as relative path or absolute path), it will appear just fine for them on design and sheet layers. If another user opens the file after a Save & Commit action, Vectorworks prompts them to re-point the reference, which they do. However, the referenced DWG will no longer appear, even though the reference object is still in the file on the design/sheet layer.

 

Has anyone else had this issue?

Thanks,

[Pat Stanford]

You can't use Absolute paths with something like Dropbox.  The path is different on each machine because the hard disk is different so you will have that problem repeatedly.

 

The file will either need to be on a shared server (not a syncing service) or use a Relative Reference.

[Isaac Anderson]

10 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

You can't use Absolute paths with something like Dropbox.  The path is different on each machine because the hard disk is different so you will have that problem repeatedly.

 

The file will either need to be on a shared server (not a syncing service) or use a Relative Reference.

Hey Pat,

 

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately we still experience this issue if it is set up as a relative reference. Additionally, if a second user re-points the reference if it is broken, they still cannot see the objects in their working file.

[Pat Stanford]

That is odd that Relative References are not working.

 

How close to the VWX file is the referenced file stored. Can you post the relative folder paths for the VWX and DWG files?

 

My understanding is that Absolute referenced include the entire path and that since the HD/SSD will have different identifiers as will the Dropbox folder on different machines I understand why Absolute references via Dropbox don't work.

 

But relative references should be something like:  Go up two levels of hierarchy to a folder named Blah and get the file.

 

If you have the referenced file stored a long way away, I could almost see it not working, but as long as it does not have to go to a different Dropbox instance, it should work.

 

This might be a good case to go to Tech Support unless someone else chimes in with an explicit "I had this problem and this is the solution" in the next couple of days.

 

One other thing to test. Reference the DWG into VWX file stored in the same folder as the DWG. Then reference that VWX file into your project.  See if that solved the link breaking using relative referencing.  If it does, then there may be a problem involving referenced DWGs.

 

Good Luck.

[Isaac Anderson]

7 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

That is odd that Relative References are not working.

 

How close to the VWX file is the referenced file stored. Can you post the relative folder paths for the VWX and DWG files?

 

My understanding is that Absolute referenced include the entire path and that since the HD/SSD will have different identifiers as will the Dropbox folder on different machines I understand why Absolute references via Dropbox don't work.

 

But relative references should be something like:  Go up two levels of hierarchy to a folder named Blah and get the file.

 

If you have the referenced file stored a long way away, I could almost see it not working, but as long as it does not have to go to a different Dropbox instance, it should work.

 

This might be a good case to go to Tech Support unless someone else chimes in with an explicit "I had this problem and this is the solution" in the next couple of days.

 

One other thing to test. Reference the DWG into VWX file stored in the same folder as the DWG. Then reference that VWX file into your project.  See if that solved the link breaking using relative referencing.  If it does, then there may be a problem involving referenced DWGs.

 

Good Luck.

Thank you for the thoughts. Currently, our project/working files exist in this hierarchy:

 

~Dropbox/XYZ-Project Name/

 

Inside of "XYZ-Project Name", we have "0. VWX Project Share" (which has the master), and "1. Initial X", "2. Initial Y", "3. Initial Z" (each of our working files). We tried to place a relative reference folder of the DWGs into "XYZ Project Name", so only 2 folder levels back from our working/project files.

[Pat Stanford]

That sounds like it should work.

 

Like I said, unless someone gives you an answer this weekend, Tech Support is probably your best bet.

 

This forum is really for User to User support (with some monitoring by VW staff), but things like this can be tricky unless they have been solved before.

[drelARCH]

Hi @Isaac Anderson

 

This is what we got recently from tech support regarding issues we had with project sharing:

 

Do not store your working file in dropbox, the working should never be in a folder that syncs across devices.  Your working file, and any one's working file should be stored locally on their hard drive as that is their file and theirs alone.

Storing the working file in the same location as the project file will cause issues, such as the ones you are seeing.

Storing Vectorworks files on icloud drive has caused many problems in the past as icloud will often remove the files from the hard drive and keep them only in the cloud.  I would suggest using dropbox or Vectorworks cloud services to store any workgroup / syncing folders.

---

 

Each computer needs to make its own working file, you cannot share a working file between computers.  Even if its you using the different computer the file is attached to the username of each computer.

Your computer does have a local hard drive so I would highly recommend you store your working file there.  Any service that requires syncing can break your working file.

 

At that time we were storing every team members working file on dropbox, same location as project file. That is wrong.

Maybe it can help you little.

 

Pavol

[rDesign]

I don’t use Project Sharing, but as Pavol’s post says, part of the problem may be that you have your working files also on Dropbox. See this article below about setting up Project Sharing.
 

Quote

Dropbox

 

- If using Dropbox, the Dropbox app must be up-to-date.

- Do NOT save your Working File on Dropbox.

 

 

Edited January 27 by rDesign