Workflow question?

[tntdraftsol]

Greetings All,

I have a workflow question that I would like some advice on. I have a side gig that is myself and the engineer that I work for. I work out of an office that he rented and he does work from his home. The way the workflow has been going so far is that I will create drawings using data shortcuts I created on the computer I work on and he will take home copies of those drawings on a flash drive to make his own edits or to plot the drawings. This has worked okay up until this last project. He took home a copy of the latest drawings, but when he opened them up at his house a road profile was showing an old grade that had since been changed. I discovered that the latest drawing was actually looking at an older drawing for the profile data shortcut. I also discovered that he did not have a folder for data short cuts in his file structure. I first sent him the lastest drawings plus a copy of the data shortcuts folder for him to add to the project file structure which I was hoping would sync up his data shortcuts to the latest and greatest. Unfortuanately that did not update the drawing with the current road profile grade. In the end I had to go into his file folders and delete the older version of the "base" drawing that was being referenced and then the drawing in question found the newer version and updated the road profile grade.

I want to avoid this in the future. Does anyone have any suggestions for a more productive workflow? I thought about AutoCAD WS, but the last I heard it does not work with Civil 3D objects. Any suggestions will be greatly appriciated. Thanks for reading.

[MHultgren]

Hi Mike,
Are you using eTransmit to export\package the files? If you look at the setups, there is a checkbox to include the data shortcuts. You would also want to look at using the "existing Folder Structure" to ensure that everything is packaged together correctly.

[tntdraftsol]

Thanks Mark! I hadn't thought of that. what's more frustrating is that I have used eTransmit before. Just so I don't misunderstand you, what do you mean when you say "existing folder structure"?

[MHultgren]

Thanks Mark! I hadn't thought of that. what's more frustrating is that I have used eTransmit before. Just so I don't misunderstand you, what do you mean when you say "existing folder structure"?

When you create a New eTransmit Setup there is an option in the settings for "All files in one folder", or "Use Existing Folder Structure" you will also want to make sure that Xrefs are all relative pathed.