We have tried the Citrix install and it stinks. Its laggy and unless we update to a video card that can service 10 machines running 3d at once its not likely to be production worthy. The other options are something we are looking at but our It service is really wanting to just make some configuration tweaks. (changing filepath locations etc) My gut instinct is that its not really going to work.

Quote Originally Posted by cadtag View Post
Citrix - Unless licensing has changed, Autodesk's EULA specifically bans that except for a special version of Map3d. Outside of that little legal gotchach that could potentially open the employer up to huge penalties, it's one of the worst ideas I'm aware of. There are places that it might make sense to run some software that way, but CAD is not one of them. I keep hearing people talk about doing it, but it's (IMHO) totally asinine.

Working across two provinces:

Now that we better understand what you are asking, the answer is "While the laws of physics do not make that impossible, it's non-trivial to acomplish".

Option 1 would be to implement Riverbed or equivalent caching appliances at either end on the intranet link. It's what we do here, and works 'ok' - not perfect and there's definitely a lag on open and save, but it's workable. Once the drawing is opened, the data is local and we don't touch the remote box again until a save operation.

Option 2 - implement server replication so that changes/updates on server A in Timbucktu are transparently replicated to server B in Calcutta. The theory is good, but implementation is the key to success. And there will be lag, so it's possible for a person in each office to think they are the only one working on a drawing and ending up with conflicting edits. If overnite replication is adequate, then it's simpler to implement.

Option 3 - hope you have a huge budget and implement fiber all the way from Timbucktu to Calcutta. You might be able to get 100Mbt speed between the two locations, which is close enough for transparent working on remote servers. That may be something we end up doing in our little remote shop - the landlord has paid to extend fiber to the building for his own purposes, and we are discussing piggybacking onto that instead of the paltry T1 line we currently use.

If working on remote files is SOP, you might be best served with combining an EDMS with the selected option. Adpet from Synergis software is one that's designed from the ground up to work with CAD files, and there are others out there.