Posting drawings to sharepoint...

[whf]

We are currently working on getting our new Sharepoint up and running, and are not sure of what the best protocol for posting drawings. If anyone knows anything about Sharepoint, or has done something like this before, I would appreciate some advice. We will be using our Sharepoint web site as a file storage point, where different users can check out drawings, modify them (or simply use them to plot, etc..), and then check them back in. From what I understand of Buzzsaw, this is very similar. The main issue that we were wondering about is what to do about the peripherals (x-refs, ldd projects, etc..) that would need to be linked to the drawings and accessible by the drawings (and the online users). Can xrefs be pathed to a web site or ftp site? Exactly how does Sharepoint work with files (are they run directly off of the Sharepoint site or are they cached locally)? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Bill Fellman

[mfowler]

Excellent question. I'm in the early phases of researching the benefit of utilizing Sharepoint Services on our own windows 2003 server (SBS). We use Land Desktop and Civil 3D.

[earnold]

Why not just bind the drawings at the time they are issued and then post? You would want people to see the drawings they way they look at certain specified times, not a live document that changes each time xrefs are changed, I would think.

[cadtag]

sharepoint in and of itself is pretty much useless for CAD design work, best usage would be for archived drawings and design only, preferably in PDF or DWF.

If you want to use sharepoint as part of your work flow during the design, you are either going to have to write a whole lot of custom integration / xref-image management; or research CAD centric EDMS packages that are built for intalling on top of sharepoint. Bently's Projectwise is the only one that comes to mind, though I would hope that there are others.