ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D

Transcription

1 BENTLEY SYSTEMS, INC. ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D Frequently Asked Questions Prepared by Bentley Systems 12/3/2012 Version 1.0 ProjectWise and MicroStation are registered trademarks or trademarks of Bentley Systems, Inc., in the USA and other countries. Autodesk, AutoCAD, Revit and Revit Server are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and other countries. A ll other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 2 ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D overview... 2 Why:... 2 What:... 2 How:... 2 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) What new changes were added with the ProjectWise SELECTSeries4 Civil 3D Add-in? How do Data Shortcuts work with ProjectWise? Are there any Known issues or recommendations for the SELECTseries 4 Add-in? What are the best practices for importing a Civil 3D project into ProjectWise? When using the ProjectWise reference scan tool are there any special considerations for Civil 3D project data? How are surface feature source files managed in ProjectWise?... 5 ProjectWise for Civil 3D FAQ Page 1

3 Introduction This is the ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D Frequently Asked Questions list (FAQ). It provides answers to some of the most frequently asked questions related to the application integration, project implementation, and modeling strategies for Civil 3D projects that are integrated with ProjectWise. The contents of this document are intended for ProjectWise Administrators, Project Managers and Designers who are working on Civil 3D based projects integrated with ProjectWise. ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D overview Why: The ProjectWise Application Integration for Civil 3D was created to answer an industry need to Store, Manage and Securely Access project related data in a single repository. Having the project data in a single secure and auditable location facilitates true real time team collaboration across the project participants and all of the document types including the Civil 3D Data Shortcuts. ProjectWise offers the following benefits to Civil 3D users: Prospector palette This palette within Civil3D is used to create and manage DS o Working Directory Place on local system where Civil 3D stores Data Shortcut for the Projects. o Data shortcut\references (DSDR) Link to items (Surface, PipeNetwork or Alignment) stored in a companion XML file. Import / Create / Edit / Delete / Export Surface features of Civil3D o Create Surface dialogs integrated with ProjectWise o Manage point overflow files (*.GRS\*.MMS) files as PW satellite files to ensure that the overflow data is always available with the master document Support 2012, 2013 What: The ProjectWise SELECTseries 4 Civil 3D Add-in supports versions of Civil 3D. The most current and complete Application Integration Compatibility Table can be found on BE communities. Application Integration Compatibility Table How: The Civil 3D Advanced Integration supports the most commonly requested integration features requested by our users. This integration deals with 3 primary areas, the Data Shortcut / Data reference workflows, support for the creation of surfaces and the integration of the Prospector Tree. Below is a short description of each Data Shortcuts / Data references - Data shortcuts can be created only for surfaces, alignments, profiles, pipe networks, and view frame groups. They provide reference links between drawings without the use of a database. When you create data shortcuts from a drawing, they appear on the Data Shortcuts node of the Prospector tree. From this location, you can insert a reference object (Data Reference) into another open drawing by right-clicking its shortcut. These shortcuts are stored in.xml files in a ProjectWise for Civil 3D FAQ Page 2

4 directory structure with a specific hierarchy known as the Working Directory. These directory paths and the files addresses in the XML files are absolute paths to the source documents. As such this requires all the users involved in the project to have the same drive mapping and access to this working directory. On a WAN and sometimes on a LAN this can be challenging and limiting. ProjectWise integration with the Data Shortcut Working Directory solves these issues and manages the Data shortcut paths as well as the source documents alleviating this limitation. The Civil 3D Working Directory is managed in ProjectWise as a single zip file with the extension.civildsproj. This file is added to the reference set of any Data Shortcut source file or any files that contains a Data reference. At the time of access this file is copied to the local DMS directory and unzipped into the Working Directory that Civil 3D expects to see. During the unzip operation the paths of the data shortcuts are remapped to a path that is relative to each user s DMS path. ProjectWise integration performs the synchronization of any edits made to these files during the editing process. Surface integration The creation of surfaces dialogs are now integrated with ProjectWise. Civil 3D has a mechanism for handling operations with large surfaces. When saving a drawing containing a large surface (generally, 1 million points for a grid surface or a snapshot of a TIN surface, and 2 million points for a TIN surface), the data pertaining to the large surface is written to a separate file that is saved in the same location where the surface drawing resides. The TIN surface companion files have the.mms file extension, and the grid surface files have the.grs file extension. These are attached as satellite references to the DWG and ProjectWise manages these as part of a set. This set is recognized by the ProjectWise open, copy, move, export & rename operations. Prospector Tree support the relevant prospector tree operations for Data Shortcuts & Surface features including the right mouse click operations are integrated with ProjectWise. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 1 What new changes were added with the ProjectWise SELECTSeries4 Civil 3D Add-in? Prospector palette This palette within Civil3D is used to create and manage DS o Working Directory Place on local system where Civil 3D stores Data Shortcut for the Projects. o Data shortcut\references (DSDR) Link to items (Surface, PipeNetwork or Alignment) stored in a companion XML file. Import / Create / Edit / Delete / Export Surface features of Civil3D o Create Surface dialogs integrated with ProjectWise o Manage point overflow files (*.GRS\*.MMS) files as PW satellite files to ensure that the overflow data is always available with the master document Support 2012, How do Data Shortcuts work with ProjectWise? When selecting the working folder you will see that the dialog is now integrated with ProjectWise this allows the creation or selection of a Data Shortcuts Project Folder to be located in ProjectWise. Once ProjectWise for Civil 3D FAQ Page 3

5 the working folder and the Data Shortcuts Project Folder are created in ProjectWise, the process for creating Data Shortcuts or using the Data Shortcut as a reference are the same as when Civil 3D is not integrated with ProjectWise. Note: The Data Shortcuts Project Folder is actually a single file in ProjectWise with the extension.civildsproj. 3 Are there any Known issues or recommendations for the SELECTseries 4 Add-in? o It is recommended that when working on a Civil 3D project stored in ProjectWise that the Data Shortcuts project be stored in ProjectWise as well. Mixing local and ProjectWise managed data may cause undesirable behavior o It is recommended to turn off the "Select Reference Documents" Dialog box while working with C3D, as under certain circumstances this feature can cause issues. o The Repair Broken References tool for Profile data shortcut references is not currently integrated and will need to be manually recreated. o After purging the local directory it may be necessary to refresh the working folder. Choose Set Working Folder" and cancel the command, this will update the dialog box. o In unique certain circumstances it may be necessary to reopen a file in order to see changes made to the references. This is due to the polling not being enabled for a newly created reference that is actively changing. However once the master file is reopened the polling works as designed. 4 What are the best practices for importing a Civil 3D project into ProjectWise? 1. Drag and drop project into PW 2. (optional) Remove unneeded shortcut folder & DS source files as they will be imported separately 3. Run Scan ref on imported project files 4. Open Civil 3D 5. Import DS project and source files (DSIMPORT) 6. Define working directory 7. Define shortcut project 8. Open existing project file a. Note the ref to.civildsproj is self-healing Recommendations o When importing a working folder the existing project must be well formed and without errors. The Import process will not correct broken references. o When importing the local working folder into ProjectWise, it is recommended to rename the original source location after import to avoid loading source drawings from original local directory o After exporting or importing a Data Shortcut project it may be necessary to refresh the working folder. Choose Set Working Folder" and cancel the command, this will update the dialog box. ProjectWise for Civil 3D FAQ Page 4

6 5 When using the ProjectWise reference scan tool are there any special considerations for Civil 3D project data? If Reference scan is run on the Data shortcut source files, Data shortcut.civildsproj file or files that have a companion file with a.mms or.grs the ProjectWise set will be lost. To correct this simply open the file in Civil 3D and the ProjectWise Integration will correct the Set (self-healing). This behavior is due to the existing ref scan tool not being aware of Civil 3D sets. We hope to have this corrected with the next release of ProjectWise. 6 How are surface feature source files managed in ProjectWise? The Source files (*.dem/.tin/.csv/.asc/ ) used to create surfaces can be stored in ProjectWise and can be accessed from within Civil 3D s integrated user interface. At this time these source files are not managed by ProjectWise as a companion file set and will not be automatically checked out of ProjectWise when the surface file is opened. For this reason the following best practices are recommended: o o The source file used to create a surface should be stored in the same directory as the file that the surface was created in. When access to the source file is needed the designer can check this file out prior to opening the file that contains the surface. Since the source file is in the same directory as the surface file, Civil 3D will automatically find the source and not display a warning message for the surface. ProjectWise for Civil 3D FAQ Page 5