Starting with Advance Steel 2022, detail drawings and other deliverables that need to stay registered to the model, will no longer be automatically deregistered if they are not found next to the model, during specific modelling commands that need access to those files.
This allows the Advance Steel project to work consistently without detail drawings available, enabling new workflows to share the files on asynchronous cloud storage solutions or local network application.
What has changed: Before this new feature, whenever commands like Open Document Manager, Model Browser, Right click on an element detailed on a drawing, etc., would check if the detail drawing(s) or other deliverables registered to the model are found in the relative path …/[ModelNameFolder]/Details/ next to the model dwg file. If the files were missing, Advance Steel would automatically deregister them from the model. This would also get saved into the model, so even if the deliverable files are placed back into their relative folder (Details, BOM, etc.), they would not appear registered to the model anymore.
This functionality would interact with workflows where files are stored on non-local drives, like cloud storage or file management systems that would mirror on the local drive only the files that are in use. In those scenarios, using those commands in the model would deregister the documents, even if the documents are not required by that action (for example Model Browser), or are not accessible at that moment due to the download being in progress.
Modifications to how the model checks and handles document registration: Advance Steel functionalities that relay on associated deliverable files use the file to read information and show it in the model. For example, Document Manager will show the detail and its update status (part from upd, part from dwg). For those functionalities to continue to work even if the file is not yet available, several changes were done. Those apply strictly to the scenario where the detail drawing dwg is created and registered to the model, but not available in the associated Details folder:
- Show in the "Unknown" category from Document Manager.
- While in this state, the file cannot be opened.
- After the detail drawing dwg file becomes available, reopening the document manager will reflect its current state.
- "Open single part drawing" and "Open assembly drawing" options from the contextual menu that appears when right clicking on an element in the model will not show. The options do become available once the detail drawing is in its associated Details folder.
- Model Browser will not show a drawing number for the elements detailed on a missing detail drawing. The field will update once the detail drawing becomes available in its associated Details folder.
- Creating a new drawing will not utilize the drawing number that belongs to those detail drawings that are not available in the Details folder but are still registered to the model. This will avoid file name duplicates.
Removing file registration from an Advance Steel model
You can remove registered files from the model using the Audit command. To run audit type _audit in the command line.
List of un-corrected errors in model 1 *** [..\Details\Assembly C1 Sheet 2.dwg] : AstDWGRegist - missing doucment
Choosing the option to fix the errors, will remove this link, and the file will no longer be registered. It will not appear in document manager anymore, and its drawing number will be freed up.
Using Delete from document manager, or Deregister drawing, will remove this registration link without the need of running audit afterwards.