Wicked Cool Stuff
Dominick Gallegos, Civil 3D Technical Marketing Manager for Autodesk, shares his unique perspective and ideas on the functionality and use of Civil 3D for a range of different project types.
About DOMINICKLatest Post
- posted 10/26/06 by Anthony Governanti Vault feature that's just Wicked Cool!
- Ok, so I'm finally getting around to writing my AU Paper, which is due next Friday, and I'm setting up a project to use to show how you can create sheets from the Vault. I setup my folders like this:

As you can see, I decided to separate my source drawings from the other drawings and created a folder called "Source". My initial thought was to have all the objects spit into their own drawings that would reside here. But as I started working through the project, I realized that the only drawing I was keeping there was the Existing Ground. I was creating my alignments & profiles, corridors, and other design objects in the "engineering plans" folder.
So I decided that I would move the Existing Ground drawing from the Source folder into the Base Plans folder to consolidate. The problem is that this drawing is referenced by a lot of my other drawings.

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So how can I move this drawing without having to going in and manually re-path all my data references? This is where it gets cool. I opened the Vault Explorer, and simply dragged and dropped the Existing Ground drawing from the Source folder to the Base Plans folder. When I do that, I get some dialogs with progress bars that pop up.

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Vault took care of all the work; it re-pathed all the Xrefs, as well as all the data references! Now I just do a "Get Latest Version" so my working folder drawings are up to date, and then keep working as normal.

Notice how the Source folder is now empty, and the Existing Surface drawing is in the Base Plans folder. Now when I open or check out any of the engineering plans that was referencing the EG surface, everything works just fine, as Vault took care of the new source file location.
Everyone is out there debating whether ort not Vault is usable, or if its worth the effort of setting up. I say that without a doubt, this is one of the reasons you have to consider it. I mean, come on; have you ever moved a drawing, and lost all the paths to the Xrefs? You had to manually go in and browse to the new location to get everything hooked up. Now you just make the move in Vault, and everything is taken care of for you.
Badda Bing, Badda Boom.
Now that is pretty cool if you ask me! I dare say Wicked Cool
Till next time,
Cheers,
AG

User Comments
Anthony, I like your blog. But its getting hard to navigate to find your old posts. How about a list with just the titles? Showed an old item to a co-worker and then he went to try and find it and he had a difficult time.
Posted 10/30/2006 6:45 PM by Christopher Fugitt
Agreed Christopher! I've put the request into our web team to do something similar, but haven't heard back yet. Unfortunately, I don't have as much control over the formatting as I'd like.
AG
Posted 11/1/2006 9:33 AM by Anthony Governanti
The first time I tried reorganizing my folder structure in Vault, I noticed how it retargeted all the xref's & data shortcuts... definitely wicked cool! Unfortunately, after I move a drawing and check it out from its new location, the Civil 3D Vault snap-in won't check the drawing in. I've repeated this in 3 different projects, 2 different vaults, and several different computers, all of which have Vault SP1 and C3D SP3. Interestingly enough, if I move the dwg back to its original location (and vault retargets everything again), the drawing checks in fine. Is this happening to anyone else?
Posted 11/17/2006 7:11 AM by Seth Burnell