External Content Drawings

[Anonymous]

What am I doing wrong that every few days I launch a project and drawings are unavailable? They were placed as External content and the original location of the 'external content' has not changed. This doesn't happen daily or even ot the same pieces of external content. Any suggestions?

[Djordje]

Version?

Build?

OS?

Where are your external files?

Be specific if you want the answer ... the global warming affects the crystal balls veeery badly.

[kevin b]

Has anyone looked into this more? We are having same problem, although it will happen within the course of a few minutes with the file open.

We have our drawing borders in external files which are specific for each of our primary clients. The master layouts in our template file are linked to the "Generic" Border. Once you start a new project, you select all the border files in Drawing Manager and re-link them to the proper client border file. Update and all the drawing masters are correct for that project.

On many projects these border files are showing up as unavailable, even if they have not changed locations on the server, the file they are linked to has not changed locations. We have tried combinations of Auto update vs manual, relative vs absolute path, etc. Nothing seems to resolve it.

Also, once the files are shown as unavailable, you can not select all of them and relink, if you do, nothing happens. You choose the file they are in click OK but nothing. If you select an individual and link to the view within the file for that paper size, it will then update and then all the others show as OK.

[Laura Yanoviak]

HELLO?

We've been having a similar (if not the same problem) -- AC11, Teamwork.

Drawings from an external source on our network are unavailable -- the Source Path is listed as my Desktop -- this file has never resided on my Desktop (although that is where my PLC is).

Thankfully, selecting "Read From..." and browsing to the correct location seems to fix the problem, although it would be nice to avoid it all together.

[kevin b]

So I see it's been a year since I posted last and we still have this problem with AC13. And it's not just these border files we use it seems to be most if not all externally linked files. For the most part it's an annoyance but sometimes it results in "empty" drawings on layout and then user panic ensues and I get calls for help.
If Graphisoft isn't going to fix or address it the least they could do is make the icon less imposing then the deadly red triangle.

[Erika Epstein]

Where are you keeping them? Have you tried putting it in the folder with the libraries on your bimserver?

[kevin b]

No, they are on our main server where they have always been. I guess I could give it a try but then they will still be on a different server from many of the projects that access them. They are not TW files and they are not accessed by TW projects exclusively.

Why would they need to be on the BIM server? Why would I even need to run BIM Server what if we were working all in .pln files?

[Erika Epstein]

I thought you were using TW.

[kevin b]

We are but it's not exclusively a TW problem. All projects.