Topic Title

How can I batch convert all of my old templete files to symbol files? I have had Datcad for a long time and have accumilated hundreds of templates. I want to now just use the symbol browser and reorginize my files.
I would hope that I would not have to open everyone of them and resave them, that would take like forever.
I have a peer to peer network and all templates and symbols are currently mapped to thier own drives.
Datacad 11.06

How can I batch convert all of my old templete files to symbol files? I have had Datcad for a long time and have accumilated hundreds of templates. I want to now just use the symbol browser and reorginize my files.
I would hope that I would not have to open everyone of them and resave them, that would take like forever.

I'm sure there is no need for any of this. Here is what I did:
1. delete folders \symbols and \templates in v11
2. move \tpl and \sym from v10 to v11.
3. carry on just like normal.

This has the advantages:
1. symbols that have been deleted over the years stay deleted.
2. folder names stay the same, just like we all know, love and understand.

I was one of the Luddites who stayed with templates for some time. One of the reasons for this was that I was complaining because the symbol browser would not handle piped symbols. This was fixed in one of the earlier upgrades. I now use SB exclusively. The only exceptions could be
1. You have some templates that call symbols out of several folders. I believe this may have been the reason for having templates in the first place.
2. You want to use the "pipe" of piped symbols.

Hello Donn:

How can I batch convert all of my old templete files to symbol files? I have had Datcad for a long time and have accumilated hundreds of templates. I want to now just use the symbol browser and reorginize my files.
I would hope that I would not have to open everyone of them and resave them, that would take like forever.
I have a peer to peer network and all templates and symbols are currently mapped to thier own drives.
Datacad 11.06

Two points (or so):

The main advantage of v11's Symbol Browser (SB hereafter) is that you can directly access the SM3 (old symbols) and DSF's (new symbols), and completely bypass the old TPL (template files). In fact, there is no new template file. The SB can open the symbol directories directly, or it can open the old templates -- but the template paths still have to work.

Though, it sounds like you have things set up so they should work without changing anything. Are your templates on a T: drive and the symbols on an S: drive? And you have these drives mapped on each machine that it using them?

If so, you don't have to do a thing: you can either use the SB to open the templates and see all your symbols as you always have; or you can just open the symbols on the S: drive directly. The thing that you will lose is the order of the symbols, but you will gain a much easier symbol saving process; as well as what the DSF files bring to the table, like layers and attributes.

Here's why I did: I left the T: and the S: drives intact. I copied the new DataCAD 11 symbols to a new folder on the S: drive. I really like these new symbols because they have been renamed with "English" names, and they have been organized in a sensible way.

I then copied my custom symbols (that I could access through the old templates) into the new v11 structure. I renamed the directories to understandable names (because you can do this w/o messing anything up) and if neccessary, I have renamed the old SM3 files to get them in a proper order (or resaved as DSF). Unfortunately, renaming the symbol files is the only thing you cannot do in the SB -- just about everything else like moving, copying, renaming of folders is possible in the SB!

If we get a really easy WYSIWYG way to reorder the symbols in the SB, then we will have everything that I can think that we might need in the SB. And it is much easier to use than templates because you do not have to duplicate everything in the symbols and templates!

IHTH

Hi Donn.

I was at first hesitant about converting to the SB structure because I thought that the years I spent building my .tpl/.sm3 library would be lost. It took me a day to completely convert everything, including renaming a bunch of my own stuff to better suit the capabilities of the SB format.

Here is a copy of what I did, copied from my DBUG post a few months ago...

What you would want to do to have the same structure for your
new symbols that you had for your old templates is to have a
folder structure in your DataCad/Symbols folder, or wherever
you want them, including over a network (which can easily be
moved somewhere else if you later change your mind)...

-My Library
--Keys & Legends
--Labels & Markers ... (old .tpl structure)
---Drawing Markers ... (old .tpl structure)
----File01.sm3 ... (symbol file, as-is or rename)
----File02.dsf
----etc.
--PME
--Standard Details
--etc.

In my old system, I had the "auto" thing turned on, which meant
all the symbols were in the /Sym folder, in a sub-folder with
the same name as the .tpl file. So to make it easier to figure
out what everything was, I opened a windows explorer window to
see my .tpl structure, another window to see my old DataCad/Sym
folder, and a third window to see my new Datacad/Symbols folder.
Then, one-by-one, I moved each of my old symbols folders
("Drawing Markers", as in the example above), putting them
in the new position (in the "Labels & Markers" folder in the
example). Now, that "Drawing Markers" is a sub-folder of "Labels
& Markers", and the files are ready to be browsed by the symbol
browser.

It actually goes pretty quick after you get a hang of the process.
For mine, I even later went through everything after all of the
folders were moved, and renamed to a more consistent format.
...The renaming process took way longer than the moving things
process, and actually isn't necessary, unless the *order* in
which the symbols display is critical ... then you would have to
deal with a naming system that accommodates the order, like
maybe starting all of the file names with a number ... 01, 02, 03,
etc.

Hope this helps, and isn't TOO confusing.

How can I batch convert all of my old templete files to symbol files?
...
I want to now just use the symbol browser and reorginize my files.
...

Hello Donn,

Just as a contribution to your job.
If you have a computer with the 'old' structure of symbols as in the \TPL & \SYM scheme, the creation of the DSF files from SM3 is automatic in DC XI, and is done when you got this setting on DATACAD.INI file (at DataCAD XI root folder):

---
[SymbolBrowser]
...
ConvSM3ToDSF=TRUE
---

You must restart DC XI to be available the feature.

Use the following steps:

1) In Explorer, copy all content on the \TPL folder (from DC X) to a new "\TPL" folder on DC XI;
2) Copy all folders on the \SYM folder (from DC X) to a new "\SYM" folder on DC XI;
3) Using the "Template" command in DCXI enter 1 time in each template that you have created, on the folder \TPL; This single operation makes all the symbols (SM3) in one folder to be 'duplicated', already with the new format (DSF);
4) Using Explorer, you can easily delete all SM3 files (*.sm3) from the \SYM folder in DC XI and all *.tpl files from the \TPL folder;
5) Now you can open any folder using Symbol Browser visualizing them with SB;
6) If you want, you can now transfer selectively the folders from \SYM to the main DC XI '\Symbols' folder. It is time to reorganize all DSF files whether you want.

Good job,
Miguel.

Hello Donn:

Thanks for your response of converting templates etc.. I guess I wasn't clear in my explanation however.
How can I convert my old .sym files so that they are now .dsf files. I need to be able to be see both at the same time. If I create a new symbol it is saved as a dsf, but it does not show up in the same symbol folder that I created it in (if that makes sense).
In other words, I want to take all of my old symbols and change them to the dsf extenstion so everything is the same.
I understand the pathing and folder names, it is the changing of the file extension that is getting me.

I'm still unclear then, about why you can't see both SM3's and DSF's at the same time in the SB. Are you opening the template, or the folder where the symbols are? Or, are you using the "old" templates?

Have you looked where the DSF's are getting created?

I don't think that there is a way to do a batch conversion, but if you tried something along the lines that I mentioned above, then there is no reason to "have" to convert anything unless you want to gain some new feature, like layers or attributes. And, if you can use the SB and never worry about another path ever again...

If we can set the order of the symbols within the SB grid at some point in the near future, that would be a wonderful thing, that would negate this one last thing that templates can do better -- but for the moment, I would either: a) not add new symbols to existing templates (this forces you to use a "parallel" sets of templates and folders, which ain't great...), or b) I would rename the SM3's (or resave them as DSF's) so that they show up on the order you want. A numerical prefix (01-, 02-, etc.) would be the easiest way to do that. I have only done this when it is really important, and I have only done it as I find that I need to.

Hi all.

The only time I actually "convert" the .sm3 to a .dsf is if I am updating a symbol. DataCad then automatically saves it as a .dsf file, and apparently just ignores the old .sm3 file with the same name. Knowing this, I will then always go to the folder where the updated symbol is, and delete the now old, unused .sm3 file.

There is an INI setting that you can enable that will automatically convert the SM3 files to DSF files:

[SymbolBrowser]
ConvSM3ToDSF=TRUE

I haven't used it personally but it sounds like it should do the trick. Here is the blurb from the "what's New in DataCAD 11" pdf file:

Automatically convert SM3 files to DSF files while browsing.

Hello Tony:

Well -- we learn somthing every day! I would want to learn a little more about how this works -- does it copy the SM3's and then convert the copies (like it does with DC5's), or does it change the original? I would make a copy of the symbols and try it out...

Also, I wonder if it works with templates in the SB, or only with "stand alone" symbols?

Wish I could add more info Neil. I haven't used it and since the SB displays the SM3's I never saw a need to use it. I updated most of my symbols and redefined them in the SB so I think most of mine are now DSF.

I do like the ideas being floated about improving the SB especially the organizing requests.

I know it works with symbol folders. It leaves the sm3 files as they were, and creates new dsf files. I set this feature when we desided to ditch templates, browsed all of our symbol folders, let it create all of our new dsf files, then backed up and deleted all of the old sm3 files. Nice thing about it was you only had to use the browse dialog box to highlight the folders, didn't have to actually open each folder everytime. Worked really good. Out of about 100,000 symbols I think only about 4-6 were unable to convert and I'm sure it was from some corruption back in the version 7-8 days.