There was an interesting question on the one of the Civil 3d groups on LinkedIn that asked about the _Sample Project directory structure that installs with Civil 3d. Do I have to use those folders? Do I need to use these folders to store my project files? Is there any disadvantage to using a different set of folders?
Unlike it’s grandfather, Civil 3d is not dependant on lots of little files and databases to make things work. From the get-go, Civil 3d stores the data it needs within the AutoCAD drawing itself. We can do away with the extra file stubs that Land Desktop left lying around within a project.
Project File Organization is still needed. We work on a project by project basis, and since we adopted Civil 3d prior to Vault showing up, we store our drawings by Year on our file server, and then by the project number. This is similar to how we stored out Land Desktop projects.
For Civil 3d projects, we wanted better organization than our Land Desktop projects, however, we felt we needed to keep a similar feel, but optimize the organization. Our project template is as follows:
In an effort to speed some things up, we created a project tool that runs outside of AutoCAD Civil 3d that is customized to our environment, and helps us save a step. By using this tool, we no longer need to use the New Data Shortcut Folder… command.
Why, you might ask. This trick is below:
Our project template contains the _ShortCuts folder and its subfolders.
This way, we can skip the New Data Shortcut folder.. command since we created the folders when we created the project. AutoCAD Civil 3d will parse the Working Folder looking for the _ShortCuts folder and will populate the Set Data Shortcut Folder dialog box as you see in the image below. The Set Data Shortcut Folder now contains those Civil 3d projects for selection.
Nice article Matt. I was about to write something after reading that same request this morning.
One question – how different is your external tool from the “New Data shortcuts Folder” option when used in conjunction with the project template? In other words, what do you have that i might want? just kidding. I am curious what you guys need beyond that…
For us – we have such a disparate network folder structure that i prefer to put the shortcut folders in their own “project dbase” area on the network separate from the project files. Primarily so i dont have to keep switching the working folder (as i would have to for EVERY project). [double spacing included
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[...] @EngEff: New blog post: Shortcuts & Civil 3d Project Templates http://civil3dpedia.com/2010/0…..templates/ [...]
Does this work with C3d 2009?