Tutorial Exercise: Creating Data Shortcuts
Create data shortcuts from the active drawing.
Data shortcuts are stored in the _Shortcuts folder for the active project and are used to create data references to the source objects in other drawings.
Each data shortcut is stored in a separate XML file.
Now you can create references to the data shortcuts in other drawings.
When you create a data shortcut for a corridor that uses alignments and profiles for its baselines, data shortcuts are automatically created for those baselines. If corridor baselines are comprised of feature lines, shortcuts are not created independently for those feature lines, but when the corridor shortcut is referenced into a drawing, the baselines are treated as alignments/profiles. For more information, see To Create Corridor References.
When you create a data shortcut for a profile or a sample line group, a data shortcut to the parent alignment is also created.
When you create a data shortcut for a sample line group, data shortcuts to the sampled sources are not automatically created. However, if an object is a sampled source for a sample line group, that information is shown in the Status column in the Create Data Shortcuts dialog box. For more information, see About Sample Line Group Data Shortcuts and References.
You can create folders for organizing data shortcuts. In addition, when you create data shortcuts from objects that are stored in subfolders, the subfolder structure is replicated in the data shortcut project.
Now you can drag and drop existing data shortcuts or existing folders into the new folder.
Make a data shortcut project the default for the current drawing.
Associate a data shortcuts project with all the drawings in a folder.
Remove a data shortcut to make it unavailable for future data references.
You can remove a data shortcut from the Data Shortcuts collection in Toolspace, on the Prospector tab. Doing this does not remove any data references to the source object that exist in drawings, but it prevents anyone from creating more references to the object.
Control access to the use of data shortcuts.
You can remove the Data Shortcuts node from the Prospector tab of Toolspace. This can be useful if you want to prevent the use of data shortcuts.
Use the ShortCutNode command to either hide (disable) or show (enable) the Data Shortcuts node.
Data shortcuts can become invalid if changes occur to the names or locations of drawings or reference objects.
When a data shortcut reference is broken, the icon is displayed next to the invalid data reference in Toolspace, on the Prospector tab.
Validation reloads the data references if the drawing paths have not changed. Otherwise, you must repair broken references.
The system checks data shortcut references. If any references are broken, the Event Viewer opens and displays details that you can use to fix the problem.