Transferring documents with extensive references

By default, the Global Collaboration Framework always replicates a document if it has parent or child references. This means that one briefcase is created for every reference family. For example, if an assembly with 1000 parts has only 10 modified parts, those 10 parts will be exported to a single briefcase and sent to the target sites. The Global Collaboration Framework uses the steps in the following algorithm to determine the documents to export:

1. Search for all modified documents.
2. Determine all top level referenced documents that refer to the modified documents.
3. Export each found family to a briefcase with its references. Documents that have not been modified and documents that have already been sent as part of a previously processed assembly are skipped.

This algorithm works acceptably in most environments.

However, in some environments, there can be top level referenced documents that refer to a majority of the other documents in the vault. One example is an environment that uses solid modeling applications like Autodesk Inventor extensively. In these environments, modifying just a few documents can lead to exporting very many documents because the export processor finds and exports all of the top level assemblies for which most of the documents are unchanged. In such environments, the default algorithm is inefficient and can decrease performance unacceptably. An obvious symptom of this effect is when scheduled export tasks take 6 or more hours and do not complete after business hours.

Global Collaboration Framework 2012a and later includes an alternative export algorithm:

1. Search for all modified documents.
2. Determine all top level referenced documents that refer to the modified documents.
3. Export only the new documents that are referenced by the family. Modified documents are exported individually without their references.

In environments like the preceding description, this improves performance dramatically. To activate the alternative algorithm, enable the AssemblySyncOpt2 option as described in Configuring the export settings.