How to Set Up AutoCAD to work with the Triofox Windows Client

How to Set Up AutoCAD with the Triofox Windows Client  

This article will cover the initial setup that is necessary to get AutoCAD to sync properly via the Windows Client. This setup may change in the future, but as of Triofox Windows Client version 11.9+ and AutoCAD 2020, these are the settings that I have found to provide the greatest stability during testing. 

Step 1 

Check that the setting "Disable AutoCAD optimization"

The setting is from the Triofox (Dashboard >> Clients & Applications >> Client Settings >> Mapped Drive Control).

Unchecked: This setting was introduced to delay the sync by combining several changes into a single change. This is specific for users who save frequently or have the AutoCAD autosave feature enabled with short intervals. AutoCAD files are only uploaded when the user closes the file from within AutoCAD. 

Uncheck the setting if only one person is working on the AutoCAD files.

Checked: When the setting is checked, windows client will sync the file to cloud as soon as the file is saved. Check the setting if the user needs the change to be uploaded to cloud as soon as possible.

When multiple users are working on same set of AutoCAD files, check the setting.

Step 2 

From Triofox (Dashboard >> Settings >> File Locking >> Setting), ensure that the following three settings are checked. All other checkboxes should be unchecked: 

• "Enable distributed locking when accessing files" = checked 
• "Lock file exclusively" = checked 
  When the setting is checked, if a file is locked, other user can't open it even in read-only mode.
  If you still want to allow other users to view the file while it is locked, uncheck the setting.
• "Unlock file after it is uploaded" = checked 

Leave the textbox empty for "enable scheduled sync for files with the following extensions when the file is locked:" Then, add "acad.exe" to the semi-colon-separated list of "apply lock only to following proc 

Step 3 

In AutoCAD, execute the command "ISAVEPERCENT"  

Change the value of this setting to 0. This will instruct AutoCAD to perform full file-saves as opposed to incremental saves based on white-spaces percentages. According to AutoDesk, setting this value to 0 will help to prevent the corruption of the DWG file. 

Step 4 

Right-click on the folder where the DWG files are saved and enable offline mode so all external file references are always present locally. 

Step 5 

Double-click on your DWG file to open it from the mounted drive of the Windows Client with AutoCAD. If the File References does not automatically open, type the command "XREF" without quotes in the AutoCAD command box. From the File References window, right-click on each reference name that looks like a full path and choose to "Change Path Type" to Make Relative. This is important, because different windows clients may load with different drive letters. Ideally, you should structure your folders so the referenced files reside on the same directory as the parent DWG file, or in a sub-folder. 

Step 6 

From the Triofox (Dashboard >> Settings >> Folder & Storage >> Filters), add DWL and DWL2 to the first two settings. 

The reason for this is that DWL and DWL2 contain basic locking information that AutoCAD uses to set locks in environments where two or more users may be accessing the *same* file. However, due to the Windows Client and the Triofox cloud architecture, each user will have their *own copy* of the AutoCAD file in his/her Windows Client cache directory (%localappdata%\gteamclient\cache). So, the locking mechanism is not necessary and can make AutoCAD think that the program has crashed or the file is corrupted. 

Here is a comment from an AutoCAD technician: 

"The DWL files are created by AutoCAD when a drawing file is opened for editing. The data inside them is used by AutoCAD to tell you who has the file opened should someone else try to open the file. When the file is closed AutoCAD will erase both files. If AutoCAD crashes, the files will be left and then the drawing recovery routine will use them to alert you that a crash happened and these drawings may need recovery." 

Screenshot showing the contents of DWL and DWL2 files 

Step 7 

Ensure there is enough space and cache size limit on the hard drive where the cache is being stored. To locate the windows client cache path, from the system tray, launch the Triofox drive client,  click on the menu icon, and select Management Console. 

Then, ensure that the Cache Size Limit is adequate and that the disk has enough storage. In the example below, the cache folder’s location is under: 

 (C:\ Administrator\AppData\Local\gteamclient\cache), and the Cache Size Limit is roughly 10GB (10,000 MB). 

Step 8 

Lastly, ensure AutoCAD is set up to automatically generate BAK files for your drawings as a safety precaution. If your cloud folder is set up with versioning or in-place versioning, Triofox is already keeping a full-version of each file each time a new version is uploaded. However, since DWG file synchronizations are usually delayed until the program is closed, the previous version in Triofox may be older than the BAK file, especially if you have autosave configured in AutoCAD. To turn the BAK file feature ON or OFF in AutoCAD, execute the command "isavebak" with a value of 1 or 0 respectively.