About Autodesk Desktop Connector

Desktop Connector is the Autodesk application that relays information between your Windows operating system and Autodesk Docs.

Desktop Connector creates a connected drive on your computer so you can access your Autodesk Docs accounts and projects. When you view the connected drive in Windows Explorer, it is indicated by a icon. An account within the connected drive and the projects within the account are indicated by a hub icon .

When Desktop Connector is running, a small icon will appear in your Windows system tray to show different statuses. For more information, see Tray Icon and Statuses.

Desktop Connector activities

The Desktop Connector activities are displayed on the home screen. For more information, see Docs - Home Screen and Activities.

Saving, uploading, downloading, editing and deleting documents

When you save documents to the connected drive, or drag and drop documents to the connected drive from another folder using Windows Explorer, the documents will be uploaded to Autodesk Docs and made available to other project team members. Likewise, when you delete documents from your connected drive, they will be deleted from Autodesk Docs.
Important: Deleting documents from your connected drive while it is connected will result in the documents being deleted from the Autodesk Docs project. You can delete local documents using the Delete Local command if you are using the Desktop Connector offline mode. Deleting local folders when you are in offline mode is not supported. For more information, see How To Clear the Cache of the Autodesk Docs Desktop Connector.
There is a delay before changes made in the Autodesk Docs web interface and changes that other project team members make and save to the project documents are reflected in the local connected drive. For information about the refresh rates, see Access Autodesk Docs On Your Desktop in the Autodesk Docs Help.
Documents are not downloaded to your local drive until you open them in Civil 3D or manually download them by right-clicking a file in Windows Explorer and selecting Sync. After a document is downloaded, it has a status of Synced.
Documents that are not downloaded, but exist in the project, appear as proxy versions in Windows Explorer. If a document is not yet downloaded locally, it has a status of Online.
The specified path and file name for uploaded files must be less than 244 characters. If this length is exceeded, the files might not upload successfully and you could experience unexpected behaviour. For more information, see Docs - Long Path in the Desktop Connector Help.
Editing Civil 3D drawings in offline mode is not supported.

Storage management

Desktop Connector uses your C: drive as the local cache for storing documents. For example, the full path for a project might appear as C:\Users\<user name>\Autodesk Docs\<account name>\<project name>\Project Files\<folder>.
Desktop Connector does not have a mechanism for specifying a different drive for storing documents.
You can use the Free Up Space command to remove local Desktop Connector workspace files and folders to free up disk space. For more information, see Docs - Free Up Space.
If synced documents are not opened for a period of 15 days, they will no longer be available in Desktop Connector offline mode. When they are removed from the local cache, they will still be visible on your connected drive but will have a status of Online.

File State Definitions

The file state will indicate the state of the file in the local, connected drive.

New: The local file has not been uploaded.
Synced: The local file is up to date with the file in the data source.
Online: The file has not been downloaded locally (the file will be downloaded on demand).
Modified: The existing file has been modified locally and the modification has not been uploaded.
Conflict: Edits have been made to the file both locally and in the data source. Next time the file is read, the local file will be sent to the recycle bin.
Stale: The local file is an older version than what is in the cloud (the file will be downloaded on demand).
Error: There was an error obtaining the local file's Status value.