[ORD 2019 R2] Workspace on a Network

Hi Chuck,

caddcop said:

Has anyone found a way to have a workspace on a network, but have the delivered workspace still located at its default location?

yep, I think we have it set up like you desire. The delivered configuration is local and accessible to the users. Our configuration is stored on the network.

This is done in the ConfigurationSetup.cfg by defining the variable  _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION

caddcop said:

I'm hoping I can select a Workspace and the list of worksets will change,

This is the way it works, WorkSets are children of their WorkSpace. The WorkSets are CFG files in a single location, local or network.

caddcop said:

that some of these will be on the users C: Drive and others will be on the network.

It doesn't work like this, all WorkSets .cfg file are stored in one location. You can have a workset point to its data files anywhere you want.

Hope this helps.

I'm going to assume you are correct and run with this. Thanks.

No Problem let me know if you have any questions. And to answer your questions directly I updated my response.

OK, this was not working for me. (Initially!)

In C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRoads Designer CE\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg

it contains the following lines:

# If your organization has its own Configuration directory, you can define
# _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION to that directory path and use it as follows.
#
#_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = D:/.../MyConfiguration/
#_USTN_CONFIGURATION : ${_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION}

But when I add these lines to my file:

_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = $(_MDOT_ORD_WORKSPACEROOT)Standard/
_USTN_CONFIGURATION : ${_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION}

The first assignment was successful, but not the second. As a last resort, I changed the assignment from a : to an = and that seemed to fix it. That's what I get for following instructions explicitly.

So now I see the dual list of Workspaces. However, when I select one of the network Workspaces, the CFG processing never reads the WorkspaceSetup.cfg file. The Organization\standards.cfg file is still read from the local location.

Apparently, the WorkspaceSetup.cfg file needs to also exist on the network in a matching relative location. I'm still figuring out what's the best approach for the Organization-Civil files. According to the Bentley Civil approach, this is where are agency wide standards should reside with that ideally being on the server. But to also allow the training and examples to function from a local workspace, we would want those workspace to retain a local Organization-Civil folder.

I' thinking the rather terse introduction comments in the Configuration Setup.cfg could use a bit more detailed information to get this up and running.

Does anyone know if there is an actual guide on how to really implement this type of installation. It looks like the tools are all here, but my PHD in configuration files has apparently expired.

OK, this was not working for me. (Initially!)

In C:\ProgramData\Bentley\OpenRoads Designer CE\Configuration\ConfigurationSetup.cfg

it contains the following lines:

# If your organization has its own Configuration directory, you can define
# _USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION to that directory path and use it as follows.
#
#_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = D:/.../MyConfiguration/
#_USTN_CONFIGURATION : ${_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION}

But when I add these lines to my file:

_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = $(_MDOT_ORD_WORKSPACEROOT)Standard/
_USTN_CONFIGURATION : ${_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION}

The first assignment was successful, but not the second. As a last resort, I changed the assignment from a : to an = and that seemed to fix it. That's what I get for following instructions explicitly.

So now I see the dual list of Workspaces. However, when I select one of the network Workspaces, the CFG processing never reads the WorkspaceSetup.cfg file. The Organization\standards.cfg file is still read from the local location.

Apparently, the WorkspaceSetup.cfg file needs to also exist on the network in a matching relative location. I'm still figuring out what's the best approach for the Organization-Civil files. According to the Bentley Civil approach, this is where are agency wide standards should reside with that ideally being on the server. But to also allow the training and examples to function from a local workspace, we would want those workspace to retain a local Organization-Civil folder.

I' thinking the rather terse introduction comments in the Configuration Setup.cfg could use a bit more detailed information to get this up and running.

Does anyone know if there is an actual guide on how to really implement this type of installation. It looks like the tools are all here, but my PHD in configuration files has apparently expired.

Chuck - are you using 'workspace' in the v8i sense? This is now called the configuration. Do you want to put your custom configuration on the network, with its relevant WorkSpaces? For example, is _MDOT_ORD_WORKSPACEROOT pointing to a WorkSpace (CE meaning) folder or a configuration folder?

_USTN_CUSTOM_CONFIGURATION = $(_MDOT_ORD_WORKSPACEROOT)Standard/

I will have a look at this tomorrow and see if I can get something put together. As I understand it, you want the delivered configuration on local drive, but your agency-wide standards on the server. Correct?

Hi Chuck - Please take a look at the Wiki page at https://communities.bentley.com/products/road___site_design/w/road_and_site_design__wiki/36648/how-to-create-a-customized-network-workspace-environment. The first paragraph in the Answer has a link to a document with instructions and details that should help you out.

That's correct. When our users try to use any learn server class data, we need them to still be able to easily get to the delivered workspace.

Keep in mind, we are generally working with Managed Workspaces but have many legacy projects still using unmanaged workspaces so users are sometimes dealing with the MicroStation Manager and other times dealing with a captive workspace and sometimes what to them seems to be a  hybrid. And once we roll out ORD, we plan on being 100% managed Workspace for those projects. But for now, we are testing and fixing deficiencies in the ORD workspace, as well as learning how it works, compared to how V8i worked. I'd rather have a functional network workspace, configured how we need it to work as a template for what we bring into ProjectWise.

We are awaiting an upgrade to our PW server (currently s V81 SS# version) that is coming in a month or two, so even if we wanted to, we cannot use a managed workspace with ORD. In V8i, we use "Discipline" CFG Blocks (now Roles, I believe) and we use Projects to define "relative" paths to project files and locations, so some operations outside of PW has to be dealt with differently.

For now, we have not even decided if Workspace for us will be similar to projects and workset used like discipline/roll.

Hi Chuck - first of all, thanks for all the posting and information sharing you do. It has been more helpful than you can imagine over the years!

We are a little behind you and just starting to set up ORD now.  I would be very curious if you got this working and if so, could you share some of the nuts and bolts?  We are a very small shop and only have one IT guy and four ORD users including myself. As the Senior Project Engineer in our Transportation group I am trying to gather information, to help him to better help my team. Ideally, we would put the Georgia DOT Workspace configuration on network drive E: and have the individual Projects (Worksets?) stored out there too, while keeping local C: drive copies of some things for individual training, etc. like you described in the post above.

God bless and thanks in advance,

Michael