Updating templates

[Anonymous]

I want to put a template in a file on the network so that every time it is updated the files linked to it update as well. Is this possible?

[Rob]

James,

how do you keep your hotlink database organised? Do you have detail hotlinks specifically named and stored in some rather rigid folders structure? Or do you keep a hardcopy book with details printed with some reference number on it? I am curious what actually works best in terms of real life workflow in a documentation process.

[Anonymous]

I wish we could use the workflow:

1. There are two fundamental folders: one for standard documents which must be identical in all our projects ("ALL-WORKS-WIDE"), and other for initial version of standard project in PLN format with initial versions of standard documents which must be modified for each particular project("PROJECT-WIDE"). When I say "folder", I mean root folder and it's subfolders, of course.
2. We insert documents from both folders into the initial version of standard project as links.
3. When we start new project we just copy the "PROJECT-WIDE" folder. The copy is the new project file - a very first version . It contains "ALL-WORKS-WIDE" documents (no problems here - they are placed with absolute network path). And it contains links to documents in the "PROJECT-WIDE" folder. But we have to relink them into their copies!!! If we did this, it would make our life much easier with a lot of standard documents, pre-linked into our project.

In this particular case I think that it can be worth to write an Add-on for rebinding all particular-folder based links with other folder. When we can implement this workflow.

What do you think about that?

P.S. According to my tests, PLN and TPL files are about the same. 191 bytes isn't a very big difference .

[James Murray]

Rob wrote:
Do you have detail hotlinks specifically named and stored in some rather rigid folders structure?

That's basically it. There's no dead tree version, I wouldn't want to maintain it. We're talking about only several dozen files, but I would think that natural language naming would scale pretty far. I wish we could make the module image into the file's Finder icon. (I think that can be done on Windows?) The modules are published from a master details PLN.

@Leo, relative module paths would be most welcome.

[Anonymous]

James wrote:
Leo, relative module paths would be most welcome.

Yes, I can't understand why ArchiCAD haven't had relative links yet. But relative links can't help us with "PROJECT-WIDE" initial versions of linked documents if we work with TeamWork version. Our usual practice is opening teamwork file and resave it as a local copy. I am afraid, relative paths in this local version will be rooted in the local copy's folder.