About Local Workspace

Windows applications (ProjectForce client applications and document authoring applications) can access vault documents in one of two ways:

• Direct vault access
• Local Workspace

Direct vault access has some distinct advantages:

• It allows all Windows applications to access documents stored in an ProjectForce vault.
• Only one copy of a document may be opened at any one time.
• It is transparent to the Windows user, and therefore very easy to use.
• It has integrated security.
• It can always correctly resolve document references.
• Documents can be made available via a UNC path or network share.

Unfortunately, direct vault access also has some drawbacks:

• Responsiveness and speed of document access can be an issue on slow networks, or when opening very large files or files with many references, such as complex 3D assemblies of Autodesk Inventor or SolidWorks.

Local Workspace provides access to documents through a managed cache on the local computer. Local Workspace resolves the disadvantages of direct vault access.

Note    Local Workspace is enabled by default for new vaults.