The Drawing Explorer command presents a list of all Carlson data files that are made in association with a drawing. The knowledge of these files is contained in the .INI file that shares the drawing name (e.g. Estates.dwg, Estates.ini). If a drawing was not made in Carlson or does not have a companion .INI file, then Drawing Explorer will display "No Files". In Configure > General Settings, if Save Drawing INI Files is clicked off, then Drawing Explorer will again display "No Files". Drawing Explorer will also not show any data files where the drawing name starts with the seven letters "Drawing". Using any other file name, once data files are created such as a coordinate (.CRD) file, then Drawing Explorer will track these files in the order that they are created. Drawing Explorer helps manage drawing-related data.
Example 1
If we are working in a drawing called Estates.dwg and create a coordinate file Estates.crd, then later create a second coordinate file called Estates-GPS.crd, Drawing Explorer would display the following:
The coordinate file created or modified last appears at the top of the list. All data files are displayed in the order of most recent to oldest. If the Estates.crd file is set as current by the command Set Coordinate File, then added to or revised, Estates.crd will move to the top of the list. Thus old, relatively unused files will gravitate to the bottom of the list.
Files are displayed by category. So far, we have only the Coordinate Files category. There are also Raw Field Note files (.RW5), profiles (.PRO), section files (.SCT) — in fact dozens of file type categories that will display once these files are actually created.
If a data file is selected and highlighted, the Up and Down keys
will become
enabled, and the user can move files up to the top of the list or
otherwise alter
their position. The position of files affects
only the reporting of the files using the Report option in the lower
left of the dialog.
When highlighted, a file can be removed from the list (but it won't be
deleted from
the hard drive!). The Add option will add other older or non-referenced
data files to
the list of files associated with the drawing.
Example 2
As we do more work in the file Estates.dwg, data files will begin to proliferate and will appear in Drawing Explorer. Shown below is a more comprehensive list of files, with occasional examples of multiple files within the same category. Categories themselves float to the top of the list if any of their data files have been used more recently than data files in other categories.
Note that there is even a Miscellaneous Files category, that includes ASCII point files created by the command Export Text/ASCII File.
When many data files are involved, the Report option becomes very useful. Here you can use the Report Formatter to display, in any order, the File Name, File Type, Date last modified, Time last modified, Size in bytes, and whether it is Found (e.g. exists) in the specified directory. For example, if a file was created in a certain directory but moved using Windows Explorer to another directory without being further altered in Carlson, it would show up here as not found. ("No" would appear in the Found column).
Shown here is a summary of our data files by size, with reporting of the found status. In this case, the Estates.Lot file has been moved or deleted.
The Report Formatter can be used to move to the right side all items that are desired for reporting, with the up-down options used to set the report order (e.g. File type first, File name second, etc.). Click the Display button (not shown above) that appears at the bottom of the Report Formatting Options dialog, to obtain the report shown here.
A deleted or missing file such as Estates.Lot will appear in Drawing Explorer with a special red [no entry] symbol as shown here.
Pulldown Menu Location: Settings > Project
Keyboard Command: dwgxplore
Prerequisite: None
File Name: \lsp\gisutil.arx