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Cloud Project Sharing Worries


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So I have the sync app on my computer with the synced folder - my co-worker has the same thing.  My co-worker checks out an object, or layer - this action is automatically pushed to the project file from her working file.  That file then needs to sync both up to the cloud then down to my computer before I know that she has those objects.  What if I grab those objects in the mean time?  Does VW prohibit the checking out of objects if it detects that there is a sync in progress to wait and see if there is going to be a conflict?  Does it prohibit committing if it detects?  If so - and we have 4 people checking in and out and committing things - the project file will be in a constant sync.

How does this work exactly?  I am sure you have done some real work testing - is it really fast enough to use?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

The project will be constantly syncing if that is occurring, yes. You MUST have the cloud sync app (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) open and running in order for this to work properly. Your working file should be kept LOCALLY and NOT in the cloud folder, just store the project file in the cloud.

The instant you check something out, Vectorworks will talk to the syncing app, and set a time that this action happened and sync the change to all other synced users. If two things happen nearly at the same time, it doesn't matter, since one of them WILL be first by even .001 seconds, it is extremely accurate with it's timestamp checking.

If a user needs to go offline for a long period of time, they will need to check out anything they need to work on and no other users will be able to touch those items until the offline user returns them or until the project admin kicks them off and frees up the checked out items, at that point though the offline user would not be able to commit their work and would have to copy it into a new working file once they connected it again.

ONLY a small timestamp and changelog is exchanged initially to check whether an object can be synced or not, the bulk of the data starts transferring afterwards so the delay is negligible on most internet connections, though there are minimum recommendations for internet connectivity listed in the system requirements so that it doesn't surprise anyone if they're still stuck with DSL or things like that.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

The key is having the cloud storage app of choice open, updated and running, Vectorworks talks to these apps directly via their various APIs to ensure proper syncing. You can NOT use a cloud storage system that we do not explicitly list as supporting and expect it to work as the supported versions do, but we support pretty much all the big ones and may add more if demand comes up.

Also, tomorrow check the Project Sharing new feature video, it is loaded with how-to and not just a commercial. Many of them are like that and I think users will appreciate the change.

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  • Marionette Maven

The QA team, of which I'm a part of, has spent quite a bit of time testing the Dropbox project sharing. We haven't had many issues overall, and those that we did come across in testing have been remedied prior to release. The changes are reflected nearly immediately from what I've seen, both when we were all sharing from the office and when one/more of us were working remotely for testing. 

As always, when using this feature, if you come across anything that seems wrong, please report it! We can't fix it if we don't know about it!

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  • 1 month later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
3 hours ago, Will said:

@JimWWe work in a remote location with unreliable internet, Dropbox and Google drive are not optimal because they have to sync to the cloud before the file is transferred over the LAN.

 

Resilio sync is our preferred solution because it can operate wholly peer to peer. Could you support Resilio Sync please?

 

Make sure to file a wish list request! The more people that want the same, the more likely it will be included.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

We(3 People)  are using VW 2017 project sharing via dropbox, Master file is about 100MB although it is quite a large project, we have more than 120 sheets already, we mostly use symbols and plugin objects, and VP's. 

We haven't experienced any crashes at all, but the problem is it becomes incredible slow, I mean moving a rectangle takes about 3 seconds, although I checkout layer that I'm working on. I've already contacted technical support and their solution was replacing the master file, it worked for about a week, so now we are recreating master file weekly. Only the Master file is on Cloud, working files are locally stored.And network connection is 100Mbps/40Mbps. 

If I switch to offline mode file works quite good, but I need network connection for my computer. Is there another walk around?

Thanks

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