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Project Sharing - Where are we?


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There was no mention of any project sharing updates, upgrades, or stability improvements in 2020.  We abandoned it last year because it did not work with Google Drive - File Stream - which is the only Dive Sync available for G-Suite.  We need a solution.  We would love to know any other setups we can consider that do not require an in house server.  

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

+1 has this been resolved? 

 

Company is moving to Google Drive all in next month and I need project sharing to work. There is no clear info anywhere on this, like what version of what app it supports ect, it just says GOOGLE DRIVE which is totally unhelpful. I have had no response from VW technical support other than them saying it is fully functional on google drive.

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On 11/22/2019 at 1:27 PM, Diego-Resuelvectorworks said:

Works with Google Drive but is painfully slow, because GDrive uploads the whole file every time something changes in the file, DropBox only uploads the changes to that file so is much faster

 

What google drive application are you using and what version? My understanding is that it does not work with Google Drive File Stream.

 

Edited by Daisy Molare
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I've been testing the official Google Drive app for macOS and compared with DropBox the sync process is too slow over the same internet connection, we did the following test, uploaded a file in dropbox and the same file to Google Drive, in that scenario both services performed well, once you started working in the uploaded file, the problem became clear, after every change GDrive uploaded the whole file again, but Dropbox only uploaded the changes to that file. The result, Google drive is less expensive but slow than Dropbox when uploading the changes, Dropbox is more expensive but much faster because only uploads the changes to that file.

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3 hours ago, Diego-Resuelvectorworks said:

official Google Drive app

Hi Diego,

 

There are two different applications; either 'Drive File Stream' (Their G-Suite application) or 'Backup and Sync' (Their Free/Consumer application). Please confirm which one you are using and what version.

 

Can you confirm you are doing these tests with Project Sharing? We are having issues with project sharing and drive file stream where there are commits that vanish, corrupt vwxp files (have no idea how) or extremely slow commits when only a single person is working in the file. 

 

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  • 5 months later...
On 12/4/2019 at 3:01 PM, Tom Klaber said:

Backup and Sync is no longer available for GSuite - and is not supported by Vectorworks.  At this point Dropbox seems like the only supported "cloud" service.  So frustrated that such a core functionality has been forgotten.

GDrive - File Stream is increasingly being used by our clients and we have used it for 5 years now. We imagine it's not going away soon and will only become more popular. 

 

Any updates expected for this @vectorworks?

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@Jacob@tangably.com 

We are reverting back to old school referencing because the Project Sharing just does not work.  We even did a Dropbox experiment, and were being forced 3 times a week to create new project files and working files because of errors and corruptions.  Certainly was not worth it for us to run 2 operate cloud storage to try and use a feature that was only partially functional.  


Still would love to see a File Stream solution - we would be more willing to try and sort out the issues if it did not require us to abandon our current cloud solution. 

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
2 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

were being forced 3 times a week to create new project files and working files because of errors and corruptions. 

I suspect that your setup is flawed. I would be glad to take a look at your setup if possible.

 

2 hours ago, Tom Klaber said:

Still would love to see a File Stream solution

We have looked at Google File Stream, and the absence of LAN Sync and Delta Sync makes this solution uninteresting. Imagine having to copy 500MB every time a user checks out or releases an object. It would be too slow.

 

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I will add to the list of individuals experiencing very smooth file sharing using Dropbox.

 

That said, we found that file-sharing has been vastly better in VW2020 than it was in VW2019. Maybe because the file sizes are about half the size in VW2020 than they are in VW2019, or maybe there were other improvements. Working on Dropbox seems smoother than using file sharing on our server. Problems arose when someone crashed, and objects were checked out, which caused the model to get out of sync/lose data. Data tags would also disassociate frequently.

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@Tolu 

But when working remotely, I am not sure how a LAN sync helps us. I figured the benefit of a cloud solution was so that we could fileshare without having to be on the same network.  The working file is local, and so after the initial sync, a person could work freely on their portion of the project - and then sync it back at the end of the day.  We are less concerned with people working on overlapping scopes that require 4 times an hour syncing than we are about having to divide up the file and reference stuff in - which is not ideal with a BIM model. 

 

I guess one of the sources of the major frustration is that it is advertised as working with Google Drive and it does not.  And even though - I guess it works with Dropbox - it only really works if you are on the same LAN.  So cloud syncing across multiple locations is - if not impossible - not recommended or truly supported. 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@Tom Klaber

Correct, LAN sync does not help you when working remotely. However, Delta Sync does!

 

Delta Sync is crucial when working with Project Sharing. This is why Dropbox and Resilio are superior to the other cloud services that we support (Google Backup & Sync, Box, and OneDrive) when using Project Sharing much like @cberg@Diego-Resuelvectorworks, and others have stated.


Note: As of Vectorworks 2020, we also support Resilio.

 

15 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

a person could work freely on their portion of the project - and then sync it back at the end of the day

This is not quite how Project Sharing works. There is still communication between Vectorworks and your local Project File, and Vectorworks needs to ensure that your local Project File is up to date before it can read the needed information from it.

 

17 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

I guess one of the sources of the major frustration is that it is advertised as working with Google Drive and it does not. 

Project Sharing works with Google Backup and Sync. It is Google File Stream that we do not supported. 

 

When Project Sharing was initially released, Google File Stream did not exist. It was simply called Google Drive, which we supported. When Google released Google File Stream, Google moved the old "Google Drive" functionality to Backup and Sync. At that point, we updated our knowledge base articles and posts that Google File Stream is not supported. We only support Google Backup and Sync. However, Backup and Sync is slow compared to Dropbox or Resilio. Note that Google File Stream still does not support LAN Sync or Delta Sync either. Maybe we missed a 

 

 

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On 11/22/2019 at 10:27 AM, Diego-Resuelvectorworks said:

Works with Google Drive but is painfully slow, because GDrive uploads the whole file every time something changes in the file, DropBox only uploads the changes to that file so is much faster

 

Does anyone know if this is the case with OneDrive also? Is there a potential for corrupted project files if multiple users are checking out layers or attempting to commit changes simultaneously?

 

I also didn't see the documentation stating Google File Stream is not supported and we've been getting all kinds of corrupted project files and lost work. Trying to decide on OneDrive (free) or Dropbox (paid). The speed isn't too much of an issue since we usually only have 3 users on a project, but if there is less chance of corrupting the project file on Dropbox it might push us in that direction.

 

Prior to this we had been successfully sharing projects over our local network, but now we're all working remotely and looking for other solutions. Thanks for any suggestions or insights.

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1 hour ago, Tolu said:

When Project Sharing was initially released, Google File Stream did not exist. It was simply called Google Drive, which we supported. When Google released Google File Stream, Google moved the old "Google Drive" functionality to Backup and Sync. At that point, we updated our knowledge base articles and posts that Google File Stream is not supported. We only support Google Backup and Sync. However, Backup and Sync is slow compared to Dropbox or Resilio. Note that Google File Stream still does not support LAN Sync or Delta Sync either. Maybe we missed a 

 

Interesting. Did not know this.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Perhaps our message was not and has not been clear. I apologize for the confusion.

 

Here is a link to an FAQ post stating that File Stream is not supported:

The post says, "NOTE: When using Google Drive, keep in mind that Project Sharing is NOT compatible with "Drive File Stream". It will still work with "Backup and Sync"."

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
1 hour ago, tsw said:

Trying to decide on OneDrive (free) or Dropbox (paid). The speed isn't too much of an issue since we usually only have 3 users on a project, but if there is less chance of corrupting the project file on Dropbox it might push us in that direction.

Either of the two solutions would work (Dropbox would be faster, however). If you already have OneDrive, try it and see if you are comfortable with its performance. Please let me know if you need help setting it up.

 

Thanks,

Tolu

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