CAD Manager got Fired, have some questions

[Rusty]

Our Cad Manager got Fired Last week. Apparently my company wants me to step into this position as none of the other Drafters have any motivation to learn how to fix things when they go bad. Unfortunately the only thing I have going to me is a willingness to learn (I learned autocad "on the job" 2 years ago). Were currently Running Acad 2008 with ADC, in the field of Modular Building Manufacturing. Most of our cad resources are contained on a network.

The two Problems I've run into since our previous Cad Manager was let go are:

Setting up new work stations. We have a new drafter starting here in a couple weeks, and I was expected to Set up the new work station with out Standard Layout. The layout includes custom Tools, custom menus, and custom tool pallets. I eventually resorted to copying the Acad application data off of my computer to the new one to solve the problem... but In my opinion without knowing how to do it from scratch I feel that I'm only putting aside something that could come back and bit me later on.

The other problem I ran into was one of the workstations crashed today and the drafter lost all of there tool pallets. We have about twenty custom tool pallets along with the standard ones all set up into 5 groups. I was eventually able to figure out how to replace the pallets via the Content Browser, and then remake the groups and then repopulate the groups with the proper pallets. The problem is this was very time intensive, and I have drafting of my own to do, and If there was a quick and dirty way of accomplishing this It would be great. I noticed that when I replaced the application data in the above instance it populated all the tool pallets appropriately. I assume there is a file in there somewhere that "knows" what the tool pallet is supposed to contain, but I looked and nothing jumped out at me as the right answer.

Any help would be appreciated, and any reading that anyone can think of that will help me move into this new job position as easily as possible would also be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance

[Opie]

You could export your profile out and then import it into the new machine. Or you could text edit the file created from your exported profile to standardize some settings to point to network locations. You could also look at this thread for additional information.

You might search for Network Tool Palettes in the CAD Management forums for additional help.

[GettinBetter]

....as none of the other Drafters have any motivation to learn how to fix things when they go bad. ....

Sounds a bit like the company I work for. Although I can understand their lack of motivation after a few years of being being permanently wrong, and having to deal with project managers who think they are designers and and all the other members of the workforce who all think they can do the job better, and seem intent on making changes, as if they knew anything about CAD management. Apparently its 'just a cut and paste job' and 'only takes five minutes'. Promising fantasy dealines, well that's another story......

This mass body of interferers, never seem to have time to do it right first time but always find time to do it twice, or even three times.

Best of luck.