Tracking File Use

[Andrew.Mills]

We are currently running into problems with who is accessing our dwg's. I was wondering if anyone new of ways to track/view the complete history of CAD files. If there is software out there for such a thing or something running in the backround that I don't know about.

Thanks

[JASONM30395]

WHOHAS will let you see who has a drawing currently open, but your probably looking for something more than that. Perhaps you could write a routine to extract that info whenever a dwg gets opened and filter it to a log file.

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

To go along the very good suggestion of WhoHas, if you have Express Tools take a look the commands

DwgLog
History
HistoryFile

Have a good one, Mike

[Andrew.Mills]

Thanks for the great advise. I am going to start using dwglog for now, but we are still going to be looking for a better way to do this. Because each person will be able to turn on and off the dwglog; so someone can still change something without anyone knowing. And without setting personal security on each (DWH) they will be able to get in and change anything that they want to. Plus, creating a dwglog for every single is going to take up a lot of much needed space. So if anyone knows a better solution that would be great.

Thanks, Andrew

[mjfarrell]

Andrew this sounds like a time to use
USER profiles on your network to restrict
access or modify the read/write permissions
for that NOT ME user.
Not knowing the particulars about the nature of the edits,
just wrong working habits, non client approved changes, etc.
This sure sounds like a situation where user training
would probably make a bad situation better and
perhaps reduce the incidence to nil.
There is nothing more frustrating than finding everything
is drawn on layer zero, color and line type by object,
exploded blocks, etc.
The bad news it is really hard to get that user to admit what
they do not know, even when you can prove it was them doing
these bad acts of cad. However it becomes very clear when
you put all of your users in a class together. It's sort of like
fishing for Flounder! An added benefit from a group session
is that you discover hidden assets, and an opportunity to
discuss your processes with an outside source.

[richard.binning]

WHOHAS will let you see who has a drawing currently open, but your probably looking for something more than that. Perhaps you could write a routine to extract that info whenever a dwg gets opened and filter it to a log file.

It really depends on what you have in place at the moment. If you already have people "well connected" with in-house customization and are loading and setting variables for each user already then what you want is easily possible with a few lines of code. If everyone is running on local copies without any acad.lsp or acaddoc.lsp or VBA customization in place, then your task for "shadowing" each user is much larger.
Something like the following could be used:

;*****************************************log
  ;;;Write out Names and dates of those who have been installed
  (setq lname (getvar "loginname"))
  (setq ltime (menucmd "M=$(edtime,$(getvar,date),DDDD\",\" D MONTH YYYY)"))
  (setq fo (open "w:/thc-2i/Documentation/installed.log" "a")) ;edit this and point it to a correct file
  (write-line (strcat lname "," ltime) fo)
  (close fo)
  ;end writing function
;*******************************************

If you wanted to get really fancy, make this reactor driven writing out the open/close times.

RLB