Opening multiple drawings in a single session of Land Desktop 2007 (SDI)

[jpaulsen]

There are several post regarding this subject on the forum. Some with obscure titles. Hopefully this post will be easier to find and will answer everyone's questions.

There is information in the Autodesk knowledge base on the subject. Please refer to document ID: TS1057006.

[sinc]

That KB article doesn't seem right. Opening files using the standard Open command does not work correctly. Neither does using the Drawing History. And I have yet to figure out how to open drawings using the External Reference manager...

I've been playing with SDI.

You can set SDI to 1, and then you can use the File History and Sheet Set Manager to switch between drawings. Unfortunately, the Land Desktop Open and New commands will only work when SDI is 0.

So, it is possible to switch this setting as needed. For example, if you are working in a given project all afternoon and want to be able to move around by using the Sheet Set Manager, you can set SDI to 1. You just need to set it back to 0 in order to use Open or New, or any of the other commands that require SDI=0 (such as PUBLISH).

Unfortunately, switching SDI between 1 and 0 all the time can get rather confusing. It is NOT a very good solution. But it's an option that may make life in 2007 slightly easier.

I STILL keep hoping Autodesk will release an SP that fixes this issue, but I'm losing hope...

[jpaulsen]

Sinc,

You are correct. They goofed again. I read thought it pretty quick and didn't notice the error.

Th KB states "There are several other ways you can open multiple documents in Land Desktop 2007 without encountering this issue:"

It should read something like "There are several other ways you can open multiple documents in Land Desktop 2007 that cause this issue."

I wouldn't give up hope yet on SP2. I've heard it will be out this Friday (fingers crossed).

[jpaulsen]

I have installed the Land Desktop Companion service pack 2 and almost all of these issues seem to be resolved.

Previously it was possible (very easy) to have a drawing from one project open and be accessing data from another project. Now it is much more difficult. I ran many tests and was not able to access the wrong project using SSM, drawing recovery, history list, double clicking a drawing in explorer, drag and drop from explorer or the AutoCAD open command.

It is still possible to access the wrong project data but it is much more difficult.

If you open multiple drawings and close all but one and the drawing you keep open is from a different project than the first drawing you opened you will be accessing the wrong project.

I also saw an intermittent problem when opening an xref through the xref manager but it was very difficult to reproduce consistently. I would say 3 out of 30 times the project changed when I opened a drawing this way.

One last thing to look out for. Creating a New drawing from the zero drawing state randomly assigns a project to the new drawing. I would recommend using the AECNEW command instead of AutoCAD's NEW or QNEW commands to avoid this problem.

[MHultgren]

One of the FIRST things I did after installation, was to set the Overrides to use AEC Dialogs when working in Land.

[sinc]

I have installed the Land Desktop Companion service pack 2 and almost all of these issues seem to be resolved.

Evidently SP2 has been pulled due to serious instability problems reported by many users...

Hopefully they'll get it straightened out soon.

[jpaulsen]

I hope so. Apparently some users are experiencing lockups.

I haven't used LDT too much since I installed SP2 but I would guess I have about 4 hours logged on it with no lockups.