The biggest serious flaw for our practice is that 4projects does not recognise a new file you are uploading is a revision of an existing entry unless it has exactly the same name. This means it is a VERY lengthy process if you are uploading even a few drawings as you are forced to upload each drawing individually rather than dragging a batch across to upload – each time you must tell 4projects that it IS a revision not a new entry, etc. Consequently, to avoid this delay each time we upload, we’ve been forced to make additional ‘stripped’ versions of all our drawings without the revision letter/number. However, this is not only bad practice but terrible for file management in the office. Having a drawing file name that is identical to another file that is a different revision is very dangerous and against industry practice! I thought 4 projects was designed to be used in the construction industry, but it seems to have been developed completely ignoring standard industry naming conventions for drawing files.
Surely you could write a code so that 4projects could make an educated guess when it sees a batch of new uploads? For example, that:
“2018xxx-A-00-03-100-GA-plan-ground_B.pdf”
is clearly a revision of
“2018xxx-A-00-03-100-GA-plan-ground_A.pdf”!?
Every architecture/engineering/M&E/etc practice in the world I’ve ever come across in 20 years does this. PLEASE make the code more intelligent, it would benefit EVERYONE! Thank you 😊
Beatrice munby
| Company | TSH Architects |
| Job Title / Role | Project Architect |
| I need it... | Yesterday...Come on already |
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I've long asked for some means of telling VP to delimit filenames according to a specified character, e.g. "_", beyond which the duplication checking doesn't look. The filenaming convention I've always used is this:
drawingnumber_rev - title.pdf
As far as an EDMS is concerned it can trim off everything from _ onwards.
The dumb thing is that even when the filename IS exactly the same, or when you trim off the extra stuff yourself in the 'Name' edit box and drag it into the 'Revisions of existing items' section, it makes you enter the drawing number AGAIN to specify which drawing it's a revision of, without even assuming the drawing number you're revising is the drawing number in the filename, even when you've trimmed off everything from the _ yourself!
I've just raised this very same suggestion (VPC-I-1537), after raising this with VfP Support. I struggle to understand why this has not been sorted, as a priority, long before now. This is fundamental to bringing efficiency and accuracy to document management. As it currently stands, the system is encouraging users to make mistakes and cut corners to save on time.
I totally agree. I can see so many new items coming onto our system that I clearly know are already on as an older revision. Then to get them all merged is a nightmare if they include comments as these are lost.