Sharing ABS catalogs across a network

[cadpoobah]

Just curious if anyone has any advise on sharing ABS support/content/catalogs across a network. I have done this with AutoCAD by manipulating the various paths. There are quite an array of paths in ABS, some mapped locally, some mapped per application. I'm not sure which paths should be (or could be) pointed to a shared location, and which ones should remain on the user's local system.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Chensley]

We are in the process of doing this at my company, what I found was that in the deployment that you make you can set where the content paths look, in our case we just pointed to a bldg sys folder on our network and it placed all the files there once, and pathed the local installs to that directory, worked a lot easier than I thought it would, also you can move the design center to the network too and just repath it from one of the AEC tabs under options. the original location for most of these files is c: docs&setting/ all users/application data/autodesk/bs2005/enu/aeccontent.

Good luck if you need more help let me know, also if you have any idea bounce them my way, thanks,

[kris.weeks]

Chensley, I think your approach is right on. Sounds like you performed a network deployment and used the network installation wizard. The wizard greatly facilitates the task of creating a central repository for these files, and mapping installs to this directory.

If you have two or more stand-alone installs, or you have a network deployment but did not use the network wizard to install, you can still manually map a network location for just about all ABS content and support files. There really isn't much you need to keep on a local machine. I can't think of anything off the top of my head. In addition to tools and objects, you can access fonts, help files, templates, and all sorts of stuff from a network locale.

To manually map network locations, open the Options dialog box (Format > Options) on a local install. In the Options dialog box, the three tabs you use to map locations are Files, AEC Content, and Building Systems Catalogs. You can set the file paths to a network location. You'll have to do this for each local install, which could be time-consuming.

If you want to read the Network Administrator's Guide (NAG), insert the first ABS install disk, let the setup screen come up, and click Network Deployment. You should see a link to the ABS 2005 NAG pdf file on the left side of the screen.

[Beth Powell]

I have done this with a company that is probably going to end up as one of the Autodesk Success Stories. It works well. This was not a network install, but several standalone machines because they were using a Novell server. We also set some standard palettes within the catalogs that are shared to all users.

I can help more and elaborate if you need more info.

[Beth Powell]

I need to write a whitepaper about this because I've been sharing it a lot. I'm out of the office right now, but when I get back I'll get some of my notes together and at least make a more elaborate post here. You might also check the archived ATP material as I just did an ATP on ABS in November I think. I can't remember if I talked about this subject there or not.

Check back here and I'll post some more info.

Chris, congratulations on your election to the BOD. I know you'll do very well. Best of luck!