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Cloud storage support for solo PLN files (DropBox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc)

mendezarcediego
Booster

Archicad currently does not support saving and working on solo .PLN files directly within cloud-synced folders such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. The save operation generates temporary and lock files that conflict with real-time sync clients, creating a race condition that can result in save failures and, in rare cases, file corruption.

 

This is not a niche edge case. The majority of small and mid-size architecture firms in 2026 use cloud storage as their primary file management infrastructure. Telling users to avoid cloud-synced folders and instead work locally then manually copy files is not a realistic workflow. It introduces human error, breaks version continuity, and contradicts how every other professional desktop application in the industry operates. Adobe, AutoCAD, Vectorworks, Microsoft Office all handle cloud-synced folders without issue.

 

The request is straightforward: implement a save mechanism for solo .PLN files that coordinates with cloud sync clients, either by pausing sync during the save sequence, using atomic write operations, or adopting a save architecture compatible with how modern cloud storage hooks into the OS. The technical pattern is well established across the industry.

 

This is not a nice-to-have. For firms that rely on Dropbox or Google Drive as their file backbone, which is most small firms, this is a fundamental reliability gap that creates real data risk daily.

3 Comments

Working on a PLN file directly in Dropbox means constant save warnings and regular application crashes. This is not occasional, it is the baseline experience.

 

Maybe Archicad should learn to collaborate with cloud platforms before marketing itself as a collaboration solution.

dushyant
Enthusiast

Hi,

I understand your need to be able to work on your PLN stored in a live cloud sync'ed directory. The file corruption seems to occur even with DWG files if you open them out of a cloud-sync'ed directory (like Dropbox) and keep saving repeatedly at short intervals. I have seen this happen in OneDrive on Windows, an MS cloud sync service on their own OS. Now it doesn't happen _always_, so it is hard to reproduce the scenario at will. But it does happen. The problem of 'race conditions' is very real and dangerous.
I think GS tackled it with their BIMcloud/Teamwork operations methodology. Note that the data stays on your local storage and does not get sync'ed with the server/cloud until you send/receive it. This isn't a true live sync, but it is one way of handling the 'race condition'.

Perhaps one possible solution would be to be able to use a custom cloud storage with Teamwork instead of BIMcloud. And since you are talking about a PLN, it could be simplified, assuming it is just one user working on it at a time. So reserve/release functions are trimmed out.

mendezarcediego
Booster

@dushyant  The BIMcloud/Teamwork approach avoids the race condition, but it does not solve the underlying problem of working within cloud storage infrastructure. It just moves the friction elsewhere.

 

If you move to BIMcloud SaaS, you trade the PLN save issue for a different set of cloud related problems. External reference paths, hotlinks, Publisher Sets and library locations are all stored as absolute paths, which means they break the moment another team member opens the file from their machine. We have a wishlist item open on that here: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/Cloud-agnostic-relative-paths-for-hotlinks-external-dra... 

 

And if you are in Latin America, BIMcloud SaaS itself may be unusable due to latency requirements by tenant region assignment impossed by Graphisoft, here is a more indepth issue: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Wishlist/BIMcloud-SaaS-tenant-region-assignment-causes-unaccepta... 

 

The pattern is consistent: Graphisoft markets Collaborate as a cloud-first, infrastructure-free solution, but the product has not caught up with how firms actually use cloud storage in 2026. None of the BIMcloud options currently address this.

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with 5/200 Votes 40%

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