[CE] Connect Workspaces vs V8i Workspaces - Is there Documentation Available to Explain Equivalency and Additions?

While we are still working in V8i, we are also watching Connect Edition developments as we know we will eventually wind up there.

What I am looking for a some type of explanations and guidance on Connect Edition Workspaces and what is new, what has been migrated. I'm pretty comfortable in my V8i Workspace and modifying them. But Connect seems to be a new beast, with new terminology and I was hoping that there is some guidance available, rather than having to brute force my way into Connect Workspaces.

  • IMHO, this has turned into an Excellent thread. I hope others find it a useful topic.


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
  • Shaylesh has included a table of contents for configuration blogs which helps with navigation.

    Some fundamental points are:

    • Redirection to the network Custom Configuration is made by ConfigurationSetup.cfg on each machine which is easiest to deploy using a installation deployment image. That is the only file that has to change on each machine.
    • Your Custom Configuration  contains one Organization. (This was the V8i WorkSpace, we have reused this word...)
    • The Organization contains as many WorkSpaces as you require to accommodate departments, serial clients, joint ventures or whatever other admin/org divisions are appropriate. (In V8i this kind of division was commonly implemented via the UCF. The UCF contains very little in CE.)
    • Individual project's data are contained in the WorkSets within each WorkSpace.

    Standards can be defined and stored at any of these three levels depending on the granularity/control/variation required. These choices may also be guided by archiving requirements as John has indicated.

    The start from scratch approach has a lot to commend it, build the structure then pull resources from V8i into the appropriate places. Obviously that is a simplification, but it should filter out configuration "tricks" that were needed to work around V8i that are hopefully not relevant to CE?

    Regards

    Marc

    Answer Verified By: caddcop 

  • A general concept with the new configuration is that each thing (CFG) knows about its things. So all the users settings are stored local to the user. All the workset settings are in the workset cfg, etc. You can still have higher up concepts like ms_dgnliblist= P:/$(Worksetname)/dgnlib/ but in general it was built so that the individual cfgs would tell it where to get it's things. This makes archiving and restoring things easier. If the WorkSpace.cfg knows about all its things then archival of a single workspace is easy.  Of course this concept and direction may have changed.

    ~HTH

    John.

    yep

  • I'll qualify for a PHD in Configurations after digesting all of this. It's too bad I had to do a lot of "seat-of-the -pants" learning to get my skill set for V8i to where it is. Some of it even originated on CLIX!

    The "Build from scratch" approach sounds scary, but I played with the wizard on an earlier release and I must say, the results were not pretty. 


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996
  • Good explanation.

    On a more basic level, I might recommend setting up the workspaces and worksets from scratch versus using Bentley's "wizard or whatever they call it". I was lazy and just let the software do it, ended up with some stuff that caused problems (like carryover vba stuff I didn't even realize was there).

    Connect r17 10.17.2.61 self-employed-Unpaid Beta tester for Bentley