Microstation accessing files stored in Google Drive

Hi Dean,

In response to "Question 2" I would like to state the following:

MicroStation is enabled to work with cloud-based storage repositories for the exchange of drawing files. ProjectWise 365 / ProjectWise Drive is the preferred (and certified) file exchange service for Bentley desktop products.

We have done some light testing of the following applications but do not officially “certify” these applications. Bentley Systems is not responsible for any loss of data accessed from these locations.

The following should be used at your own risk:

• Google Drive
• SharePoint
• DropBox
• Azure Cloud Service
• OneDrive

 We do understand that these cloud-based storage repositories are in use by some of our users. However, due to reasons beyond our control, we cannot certify these cloud-based storage repositories in the foreseeable future. Using these cloud-based storage repositories to store or edit files in conjunction with Bentley applications is being done at your risk.

 Learn more about ProjectWise 365/ ProjectWise Drive https://www.bentley.com/software/projectwise/ and view this short video "Introduction to ProjectWise Drive."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBfFXLXMnGM

I do not believe Bentley has stated they officially support any file synchronization technology. Maybe ProjectWise Drive but I believe that is still considered a Tech Preview.

The issue with any file synchronization technology is what happens when multiple people edit the files simultaneously? With changes on each end the files will be impossible to sync correctly. Windows file shares work because they have a file locking mechanism that allows MicroStation to tell others to not modify the file until the lock is released. ProjectWise (and ProjectWise Drive) work because they have a checkout mechanism where only one person is allowed to check in changed files so there is no conflict.

Google Drive and Microsoft One Drive may have a file locking mechanism available (not sure about that) but it would require MicroStation support it, I've not seen them announce such.

If you are sharing files and there are multiple people editing the exact same file at the same time, then I would expect to see what you are seeing as Google Drive attempts to sync the results around. MicroStation would be particularly problematic as by default it autosaves any changes about every 2 seconds. Disabling auto-save might prevent some of the crashes (you can do this by setting the MS_DGNAUTOSAVE to 0, that variables is the number of seconds before auto-saving).

Giving users personal working folders where they copy files in, work on them, then copy them back, might also solve some of this.

Both of these are slightly dangerous. If your users are used to auto-save, disabling it is a good way to accidentally lose work. The person working folder thing requires a lot of user maintenance that they easily forget about and you start finding files referenced from working folders instead of the correct location and it can be a mess.

On workspaces: Most of the comments here are about using it for workspaces. This works pretty well because the majority of workspace files are only used read-only by MicroStation. Even when files in the workspace need updating the chance of 2 people modifying at the same time is greatly reduced. I worry about the DGNWS file, and the UPF file. The DGNWS file is opened read-only initially but it needs frequent updating by different groups so may have file collisions.

The UPF file will only really be an issue if your users log into different computers simultaneously. This is not a typical scenario, but also not uncommon, for us. When I move our UPFs to One Drive I plan to append the computername to the end of the UPF file so each computer gets it's own copy (users can create a seed UPF if they want a common starting point). I believe most of the rest of the user preferences are rarely modified and typically only from one computer, but I haven't verified this yet.

Kevin

Ah that's good to hear thank you, I will see if I can see any google variables that may help, I noticed if we set the files in google drive to be available offline it seems to settle the errors, it could be like Barry mentioned, users are trying to access the same files at the same time, therefore, causing sync errors

I've been experimenting with OneDrive to store & access my user config files, upf files, personal.dgnlib etc. and have not run into any issues with Microstation crashing. I've also been using OneDrive for some .dgn files but, I am the only one working on the files.

We are looking at possibly using OneDrive to synch workspace files so subconsultants can download workspace files and updates. I know there were some OneDrive variables introduced but, I have not really looked into their functionality yet.

great thanks for the reply, that makes sense, I think the users are accessing the files before they have had time to sync back to google, I will try and move some files locally as a test, thanks again