About the Advanced File Management add-on

External reference files are used by CAD applications to make drawings modular. That is, to store portions of a drawing in separate files so that they can be edited individually or simultaneously. When a (parent) drawing is opened that contains references to external files, the (child) files are automatically loaded by the application.

The Project Portal Advanced File Management add-on makes working with external reference files easier by automatically including external reference files when the subget and subcheckout commands are used on the parent documents. For example, checking out a parent file automatically checks out the child (external reference) files. Instead of downloading only the selected (parent) file, all of the related files are combined into a single archive file (ZIP format with file extension .krd, by default) for the user to download. The master file is placed in the root of the archive file and the external reference files are placed in a folder named xref. After the file is downloaded, when the user opens the archive file on their computer, an Advanced File Management program extracts the files into the working directories that are configured in Project Portal. Then the program starts the appropriate CAD application as determined by an application profile that is associated with the document. The CAD application loads the parent file and in turn loads the external reference files. The CAD application is started with a script to update AutoCAD® attributes (for example, in a title block) with current Project Portal property values. All of this is done without user interaction so that the user can start working with the drawing almost immediately.

Note    The subget and subcheckout commands can have different names in some customer installations.

Configuring these Advanced File Management add-on features is performed partly within Project Portal and partly on the Project Portal server by editing a configuration file. How to perform this configuration is described in the following topics.

Note    One part of the Advanced File Management add-on must be installed on the Project Portal server as described in the BlueCielo Project PortalAdministrator's Guide. The other part must be installed on the client computers as described in Installing the Advanced File Management client software.