PEN and PLOT styles magaged by Active Directory or Login Script

[w.abbott]

Has anyone ever heard of using active directory or a login script to manage the local copies of standard .ctb files and .pc3 files?

My Ideal solution would be to have AutoCAD to have windows manage our office standard pen and plot settings. ctb and pc3 file so that each time the use logs in their local copies of these files are "self healing" if the user has alter the files they are replaced with the correct standard file.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Bill

[rkmcswain]

Should be pretty easy to do. Was there a direct question you wanted to ask?

Why not just map everyones machine to the same location on the network, then you don't have X number of copies of all these files on each local machine?

[w.abbott]

I currently have my autocad 2007 deployments all pointing to a network location BUT, when users make "custom" plotter and pen configurations the network location gets polluted with everyones ****... As far as I know once you point to the network location AutoCAD ignores the locally saved ctb's and pc3's located in the users windows profile.

[rkmcswain]

I currently have my autocad 2007 deployments all pointing to a network location BUT, when users make "custom" plotter and pen configurations the network location gets polluted with everyonesWe have our "standard" PC3, PMP, and CTB files on the network, set up read-only for everyone. There is no reason for make custom files



As far as I know once you point to the network location AutoCAD ignores the locally saved ctb's and pc3's located in the users windows profile.

You can only have one path specified, but the trick is that any shortcut to another folder inside the main path - is read in and then any files in that directory are included in the list.

My above means that we DO have a directory that users can write to, but only for one plotter, and then just to enable custom sizes. A shortcut to this directory is included in the main PC3 directory to which everyone is pointed.

E X A M P L E

So our main path is like \\server\cad\plotters\
and in this directory is a shortcut to \\server\cad\plottersuser\

\\server\cad\plotters is READ-ONLY
\\server\cad\plottersuser\ is not read-only

PC3 files from both directories show up in the plotter list.

[w.abbott]

Thank you very much! I will try this method with my existing 2007 deployment. I did have a friend at Microsoft make me an MSI file to deploy pc3, pmp and ctb standard files. I will let you know how it works with my 2008 deployment.

[dxarhoulakos]

what i do is this:

we have a shared folder on the server that nobody has write access to. this contains all the main ctb files for our standards.

if someone needs a special ctb (client, consultant, etc.), i have them save it to the project folder. then i allow them to change the search path to that folder temporarily and change it back when there finished.

[Opie]

We have our "standard" PC3, PMP, and CTB files on the network, set up read-only for everyone. There is no reason for make custom files




You can only have one path specified, but the trick is that any shortcut to another folder inside the main path - is read in and then any files in that directory are included in the list.

My above means that we DO have a directory that users can write to, but only for one plotter, and then just to enable custom sizes. A shortcut to this directory is included in the main PC3 directory to which everyone is pointed.

E X A M P L E

So our main path is like \\server\cad\plotters\
and in this directory is a shortcut to \\server\cad\plottersuser\

\\server\cad\plotters is READ-ONLY
\\server\cad\plottersuser\ is not read-only

PC3 files from both directories show up in the plotter list.
I've gone with a version of this. I have the users mapped to a local directory with a shortcut to the standard network files for plotters / plot styles. It limits the customized styles / plotters to the particular user.