Importing files using drag and drop

Drag-and-drop is a convenient and easy way to add small quantities of files to a vault. For larger quantities, see About the Document Import Tool.

Notes

• If the vault is configured to use the same document type for all Autodesk Inventor assembly files (.iam, .idv,.ipt,.idw,.ipn), all of the files will become one hybrid document if you drop them at the same time into the vault. Instead, first drop those files that you do not want to be part of the hybrid document (.ipt,.idw, and .ipn), and then drop the assembly (.iam and .idv) files.
• Importing files with external references in this way will not create Meridian references.

To import using drag and drop:

1. Open the vault folder that will be the destination of the documents.
2. Select the files that you want to import from Windows Explorer or the desktop.
3. Drag and drop them onto the destination folder or onto any document in the destination folder.
4. If you selected only one document and dropped it onto an existing document, a shortcut menu appears:

1. Select As New Revision to import the file as a new revision of the document upon which you dropped it. This command is only available if the vault document is released.

   Note    Because this action will create a new revision and the document is in a released state, this command must be customized to place the document in the correct state of a workflow according to your organization’s business process for this action. If the command is not customized, an Access is denied error will result and the action will fail.

2. Select Replace Document Content to overwrite the vault document’s content with the file. The file extension is updated if it is different. This command is only available if the vault document is under change in a workflow.
3. Select As New Document to import the file as a new document in the selected folder.

5. Meridian then detects the file extension of each dropped file that will become a new document in the vault and finds the document types associated with the file extension. If a file extension is associated with more than one document type, a dialog listing the associated document types appears. Select the document type you want applied to the imported document. If a scope is active, document types that are not enabled for that scope will not appear for selection.

6. If the document type of the first imported file has property pages associated with it, they will appear next for you to type any known information. If you want to apply the same information to all of the imported documents that have the same document type, select Apply for all other documents of this type.

   NEW   The default values of custom properties are the names of the corresponding folders in the path where the documents are created. However, if files are dropped on a subfolder of the selected folder, the values may be incorrect.

   Complete each property page and click Next or Finish. Property pages then appear for each of the remaining imported files, in turn, unless you selected Apply for all other documents of this type. Complete each property page and click Next or Finish.

   A progress dialog shows the status of the overall import process until all of the files are imported. Meridian creates new documents for each of the imported files and places them in the current folder or in the folder calculated by the Field-Path definition of the vault configuration.

7. If the document types of the imported files perform automatic document naming, Meridian assigns a calculated name to each new document. If not, a default document name is assigned that you may overwrite with any name you want.

Tip    Drag and drop also works to export documents from Meridian to Windows Explorer or your desktop.

Warning    After files have been imported to a vault, document properties that were not explicitly set during the import (from title blocks, default property assignments, and so on) contain no values. Those properties will not be synchronized to the imported content files by the Meridian application links. This is by design to prevent overwriting existing values. The properties can be synchronized from the imported content files. Such properties must be set in the vault to an explicit value at least once before the properties will be synchronized to the content files.