remote libraries - webdav support?

[Samuel Derenboim]

I know people are starting to experiment with different databases, remote management, etc... particularly with this pandemic.

 

Any way we can support library references via webdav ? (I.E. if we self-host a nextcloud or owncloud instance?)

[shorter]

We generally find that remotely hosted library content is a major issue and slows vectorworks down massively.

 

We would always recommend hosting on Dropbox.  We have had issues in Box unless the Libraries folder is 'offline'.

 

We host and manage a number of content libraries for our clients via Dropbox, and it works fine.

[Pat Stanford]

I agree with @shorter Anything that VW needs to access at "internet" speed and reliability versus a dedicated local network will be less reliable. Using a "syncing" solution like DropBox where each user will keep a local copy that I updated when the "master" changes (or changes the master when the local is changed) will give you better performance. If someone is trying to get away with less disk space and try's to use "SmartSync" (DropBox name) to only see the files on the cloud version and not have to download a local copy, you will probably have issues.

 

It looks like NextCloud and OwnCloud do true syncing, but I have no experience with either one. 

 

I would test either carefully with the largest files you normally use. If you are only using these to host reference files that are effectively "Read Only" for the users it should not be a problem. If you have people saving changes to the resources back to the files, I would test for simultaneous changes made by different users and make sure you don't end up with data collisions and data loss.

[Olaf Pfeifer]

We have been using a hosted OwnCloud Service for all our files, including all Vectorworks and CAD files, for almost four years, with very little to no problems. We use it to sync our three office macs plus 4 laptops / home workstations and it works seamlessly, and it saved our asses during corona times. There are some occurrences of failed synchronizations, usually due to two offline users accessing the same file simultaneously, but most of the time these are handled correctly (exclamation mark on the file, local copy renamed, necessity to decide which file to keep). We have also tested Vectorworks file sharing (2018) on the local office LAN, but sync times were a nightmare, so we didn't even dare trying to upload a project sharing file to own cloud.  

Does anyone know if own cloud integration is on the roadmap for Vectorworks Project Sharing? 

We would prefer this to VW Cloud Services because 20GB are obviously not enough for a complete production environment, and splitting CAD and other files would mean a hassle and double filing nightmares.