Sharing Dwg to Consultants

[AlanW]

HI,

What is the best way to share a drawing with a consultants (Say Electrical) where you want to give them a base plan which will change over time. Also we have a class called Electrical which we can give separately.

So far I have opened a blank document and imported the design layer into a new document but don't have the option to exclude the invisible classes, I get all the Classes.

Thanks in advance.

[Jonathan Pickup]

maybe in this case, it would be easier to place the electrical in another layer, then export design layers as separate files.

[AlanW]

Thanks.

The Consultant uses Vectorworks which should make it easy, but you cant export design layers as I understand only open a black drawing and import them in which is fine but the invisible classes come over as well.

We don't want to give them the whole drawing as they tend to only want the base plan and it would be good to be able to export or save as with the invisible classes and layer not exported.

Can save a drawing and delete all the unwanted but I am looking for an quicker and simpler option.

[RickR]

If you both have VW, I recommend using referencing.

I do this on the other side (theatrical consultant) even with Architects using other software. I know they in turn use the same technique with most consultants.

Once the reference (Xref) is set up then changing files out is almost fully automatic. Once in a while you have to manually Update a DLVP or referenced file. Each updated file with the same name/location replaces the old info.

This also helps sort the legal issues. Anything in their file is their work and they don't get to edit your file.

[AlanW]

Thanks,

So they still get the all the classes when you send them the file just the Viewport reference sets what they see.

This is ok but we were trying to avoid emailing a large file to them.

Guess we need to use a Drop box program and that way its the Consultants responsibility to update their files. Less work for us rather than emailing to all the consultants.