reference will only attach files in current folder

Thanks for the idea. The save relative path is checked. 

Are you using ProjectWise?

I was just stating the way the product works. Unless I am missing a step in what you have explained.

You have two files of the same name and the issue is that one of the files is either the open design file, or exists in the same folder as the open design file. I cannot tell you why you have never encountered this previously, only why you are encountering it currently.

I hope this helps in determining a workaround or a workflow going forward.

just trying to help.

In this article at the bottom is the order in which the reference is searched:

 Understanding File Locations And Reference Attachments In MicroStation 

Your search is getting to step 4 before the final step 5 of the full path of the reference.

A possible work around might be defining the MS_RFDIR variable to include the folder containing the reference so it is found before the "current" directory ? or attaching the reference using a variable ?

Possibly! I'll check into that variable. I appreciate your help! 

You can create custom variables that point to other folders and make them part of the workset cfg file. For example, if you define a set of variables, such as Project_A and Project_B, you can reference files using Project_A: or Project_B: to force MicroStation to look in the folders pointed to by those variables. There is even a Directory button to select a folder by its variable name - Select Configuration Variable...

When a CADD Standard create problems, it is time to revisit those standards. Unique filenames are possible with not a lot of work. All that needs to be done is to add a project identifier to the filenames. With Open Roads files being both CAD files and design data containers, we even added a corridor name to our standard file names, All files within a project get a project ID associated with them and are part of the filename and when a file contains design data, if it is specific to a particular road in the project, we define a "corridor" name, to be used for alignments, superelevation, corridors, terrain elements and more.

This way, reference filenames are always unique per project and referencing files across projects are never an issue.

When a CADD Standard create problems, it is time to revisit those standards. Unique filenames are possible with not a lot of work. All that needs to be done is to add a project identifier to the filenames. With Open Roads files being both CAD files and design data containers, we even added a corridor name to our standard file names, All files within a project get a project ID associated with them and are part of the filename and when a file contains design data, if it is specific to a particular road in the project, we define a "corridor" name, to be used for alignments, superelevation, corridors, terrain elements and more.

This way, reference filenames are always unique per project and referencing files across projects are never an issue.

Chuck:

We do much the same here; project numbers being the primary designator. So, we might have 12345_corridor.dgn, 12345_Terrain.dgn, 12345_Topo.dgn, etc. We have a default template which defines this structure and which gets copied into each WorkSet.

Best Regards, 

Mark