Managing CAD Drawings

[iantidy]

We use Bentley MicroStation for our CAD drawings and we want to store and manage the drawings in the Alfresco CIFS share.  We have applied automatic versioning to Alfresco, and this is where the problem starts.  MicroStation writes changes to it DGN (the drawing file) with every change in the document.  With our current configuration of Alfresco a new version of the file is created with every change (so if you draw three lines in the CAD file, you get three versions in Alfresco).

We have looked at the whole checkin/checkout process, but at this stage we want to put something in place that the users don't notice.  And we can do this by mapping their standard network drives to the CIFS share.

Is there a way that we can still have the versioning applied globally, but periodically create new versions of the DGN files (instead of every change)?  Basically the same as "Shadow Copy" does on a MS Windows Server. 

This would be a similar problem for database files (eg. MS Access).

[knixon]

You might need to look at bentley projectwise startpoint as the key is to managing the links to xref drawings.

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Community/eSeminars/ProjectWise/%28W%29+ProjectWise+StartPoint.htm

Unfortunately this would probably require you to invest in sharepoint….. unless you can use the alfresco sharepoint protocol as an alternative.

I'd love the Alfresco guys to give their views?

We're also looking at………..

http://www.organice.com/Pages/default.aspx

And if we can locate whatever happened to http://www.cadnection.com

And maybe http://www.cadtowin.com/



Karl

[knixon]

Interesting article on the topic, again only referencing sharepoint.

http://www.cadalyst.com/collaboration/file-sharing-publishing/take-cad-next-level-13456?page_id=2


Would be nice to have an Alfresco solution…..


Karl

[mrogers]

I think there's an AutoCad metadata extractor built into Alfresco now.   

What do you need to do?

[knixon]

Hi mrogers.

Thanks for your reply.

The extraction of Autodesk metadata is one aspect of what we would be looking to achieve, some of the other components we are looking for in order to extend the benefits of Alfresco to CAD project teams are;

- ability to checkin/checkout files from/to Alfresco directly from within application
- ability to render a pdf version of the file with matadata extraction to Alfresco to allow comments / workflow editing
- ability to launch Autocad (or similar) applications from Alfresco directly from the saved file with check/out functionlity
- madatory requirement to maintain or manage the integrity of Xref links within CAD drawing files stored in Alfresco
- and other requirements not yet defined.

Would welcome your thoughts.

Karl

[knixon]

A description of a competitors offering……..

http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2010/CadacOrganiceExplorer2010.html


Karl