Why are files copying local when moving between folders?


 Product(s):ProjectWise Explorer Client
 Version(s):08.11.11.574
 Area: Open / Save / Copy / Move
 Original Author:Molly Watts, Bentley Technical Support Group

Users are dragging and dropping files between folders in ProjectWise Explorer, or a right click copy- right click paste into a different folder. The number of files that appear to be moved in the status bar is double what is expected.

Why are files copying local when simply copying or moving between ProjectWise folders?

ProjectWise files are stored on file servers that may be located across various locations on the network, or perhaps even another network entirely and there is no requirement that these servers have direct access to each other. There is a requirement however that the client machine has access to them in order to access the files.

When a user is copying a file between different folders in ProjectWise the file is first copied local on the client machine and then back up to the new storage location. While in some cases, the new folder might be on the same physical server on the back end, using this process will work all the time, regardless of the storage areas you are moving from/to, instead of having multiple ways to get the same end result.

This should not be an issue, and won’t even be noticed, by most users doing small moves or copies between folders, however if you are dealing with a large amount of files, perhaps over a slow network this could take extra time so using this workflow would not necessarily be the best solution in those cases.

An obvious solution might be to run the copy on a ProjectWise Explorer client directly on the server to avoid latency if possible, but a better option might be to use Bentley i-model Composition Server for PDF (sometimes referred to as iCS for PDF.) This product has the ability to copy files to different locations in the same, or different datasources, in addition to the added option of creating a rendition of the file.

See Also

https://bentleysystems.service-now.com/community?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0022654