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Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 11:40 pm
by MtnArch
Don't you hate when you make a change to a drawing and the Owner decides later that they want to go back to the LAST version? (No ... me either!)

If you do a 'Pak-N-Go' of the file **BEFORE** you make a change and give it a name and date that identifies it as such, you will **ALWAYS** be able to go back to that milestone - file-wise, X-ref-wise, font-wise, etc. This also will work as a milestone for **AFTER** you've made a change and send it to the Owner locking in the changes to the date you've completed them (or when they APPROVED them).

Just looking out for everyone else (along with myself :wink: ).

Re: Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:28 am
by Nick Pyner
I think this is the sort of thing that is covered with daily backups.

If you, or the client can identify the date of the desired situation, client can change his mind as much as he likes. Even if you don't know the exact date, it isn't hard to trawl for it.

I use a one-button daily (sort of) backup that zips every DataCad file that has been worked on since the previous backup. The name of the file is today's date. I just copied the incremental backup done by the Iomega tape drive.

Re: Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:05 am
by Ted B
My system is to "save" or "save-as" the drawings files sequentially as "v1 filename", "v2 filename", etc... at major milestones or review dates. It eats up memory on the HardDrive, but at-least all the drawing-files or other related text/database/spreadsheets files associated with that version are all coded withe the same "vN"-prefix. As long as I know or can figure-out the "vN"-prefix, I can re-open the files as-they-where at that point without worrying about preserving the file-date of that particular computer-file on the drive.

If you anticipate lots of archive-points, use "v01", "v02", etc... so that "v02" sorts BEFORE "v11".
For short-interval archiving, you can also use "v2a", "V2b", etc. reserving "v03" for a major milestone.

While I don't archive/milestone daily, I do have autosave set for 4-minutes...the default 45-minutes is just too much to bear losing.

Re: Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:15 am
by Steve Baldwin
My processes are...

PRELIMS: All prelim files are named ... Prelim01--SitePlan, Prelim01--FloorPlan, Prelim02--FloorPlan, etc.

CONST. DOCS: Whenever I make any substantial changes, I copy the current file(s) to an "old" folder ... old--mth00-2011, then continue in the working folder.

Re: Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:53 pm
by Nick Pyner
Ted B wrote:My system is to "save" or "save-as" the drawings files sequentially as "v1 filename", "v2 filename", etc... at major milestones or review dates. It eats up memory on the HardDrive, but at-least all the drawing-files or other related text/database/spreadsheets files associated with that version are all coded withe the same "vN"-prefix.


Yes, maybe you need incremental backup. I use PKZip for the dailies. AEC files are a lot tighter than DC5s. The job files get zipped by only about 20% or so. But the system is incremental so, if XRefs, pictures and other peripherals are unchanged, they don't get included. 31JAN11.zip is 63Mb, so I was pretty busy then but yesterday's was 2Mb and they are sometimes smaller. The system puts the zips onto an archive partition and also short term onto a 1Gb flashdrive for subsequent removal to CD.

Re: Archive / Milestone Files

PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:59 pm
by Neil Blanchard
When I make a milestone copy, I do not rename the files, since this would screw up the XRef's. I make a folder with the appropriate name and Save As or copy all the project files into it. Then they still work as they should.