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Project Sharing and Dropbox


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FYI for anyone here.  We have had HUGE issues with referenced resources using dropbox and now OneDrive as well.  We have some projects with master files having 50 or more referenced resource detail files. The reason we need a cloud service is we have multiple offices in different locations.  Complicating things further we use both mac and PC.  EVERY TIME a file with references is opened at the other location ALL of the references have to be re-referenced REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THOSE RESOURCES ARE ABSOLUTE OR RELATIVE file paths.  Iv'e read other user blogs regarding Autocad on this and it seems it works fine there with cloud services.  This seems to be another massive headache UNIQUE TO VECTORWORKS.  If VWorks intends to market enterprise scale offices this will have to be fixed - otherwise do not use this software if you are a large office with multiple locations and need cloud sharing.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@lgoodkind Could you please clarify the problem? Are you saying that when a file with references is created on one platform, all of the references have to be re-referenced when the file is opened on the opposite platform?

What version of Vectorworks are you using?

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This happens in 2018 and 19.  To answer Hugues question - yes that's correct: Open the file in Windows -> correct all references as 'relative' -> save file -> open same file in OSX -> none of the references are found.  One would think this is the reason for relative file references.  Here are 2 screenshots of the file reference dialog on each platform - the working version, on Windows 10, starts with the correct '..'   The incorrect one is not a relative path and starts with '/'  I don't know where VWorks would get this absolute file path?  Is it the one created the first time the file was referenced?

 

This occurs on both Dropbox and Onedrive.

 

The curious thing is that if the file is opened from the network attached storage locally and all the file references are relative to the NAS then re-saved.  The file can then be opened via Dropbox or Onedrive remotely and the referenced files are found on each platform.

 

 

Screen Shot 2019-04-29 at 8.21.54 PM.jpg

Capture.jpg

Edited by lgoodkind
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We had the same issue, there is a simple workaround (at least with Dropbox).

The problem is that VW seems to reference the full file path (unlike ACAD).

Dropbox always wants to put the shared folders in your (personal) user folder. That puts your share as part of the path name & that's what breaks the references on the other computers.

 

We've put all our Dropbox folders in the /Shared user folder (a mac default folder) instead. Its identical across all our machines. No reference issues anymore.

 

/Computer/Users/Shared/Dropbox

Screen Shot 2019-05-01 at 9.39.30 AM.png

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  • 9 months later...

I'm having to constantly reset the Project File, I've done it twice this morning and at least once yesterday. We have the project file on Dropbox and our working files on each user's hard drive. I've cautioned all users to be sure that they have given Dropbox time to properly sync (I did this a couple of weeks ago)  but we're still having the issue. At this point, I'm hoping we can just limp to the finish line of this project (a couple more weeks) and then, unless I find a solution,  I'll give serious thought to not using Project Sharing in the future. If I do, I'll probably limit to 2 or 3 users and everyone else will have to reference.

 

For some reason, VW constantly produces .bak files that do not get deleted. This seems to be an issue with multiple users on PCs. I've tried deleting them manually but that doesn't seem to help. I've looked for invisible file thinking there was some temporary lock file that was getting hung up but couldn't find any.

 

Is there a limited number of users we should stay below? We have 16 listed but a number of those are actually the same user under different names; actually only 11 active users. We are in probably a half dozen locations and mixed Macs and PCs. I'm thinking we're expecting more out of VW Project Sharing than it can deliver.

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