Ok I'm in a bit of a conundrum here.
I'm trying to revamp our template structure because some genius hosed my previous setup. I knew it wasn't foolproof or secure as it should be, but I didn't think we had people here THAT foolish.
Anyways, the whole template folder seemingly just "disappeared" and apparently no one had used it or set up a new job using it for over a week when we discovered this fact, because none of the backups had that folder on it either, and our backups only went back a week. They had just reformatted the one the monthly one (we keep the one from the last day of the month until the last day of the next month... our backup system is slightly flawed too, I think but that's another day)
Anyways. There are three files I wish to be in every new job folder.
T-01.dwg (title sheet. can be made from template or copied.. Self contained drawing, no xrefs, completely independent of anything)
X-TB.dwg (title block that gets xref'd into other drawings. Contains job specific information.)
A-01.dwg (empty beginning drawing.. hoping I can make this into a .dwt. Has X-TB.dwg xref'd into paperspace layout.)
Ok, so before now, we've just copied all three of these files to the new job folder and started editing them from there... copying A-01.dwg as many times as needed for further files, deleting the unnecessary, and drawing more. Obviously a quite rudimentary process... worked well though, and got us by.
I'm wanting to make this a little more fail safe and make the process a little smoother. I want to be able to just hit 'new drawing' in Autocad and use a .DWT that I set up (which would be A-01.dwg saved as a .dwt) but my problem is the initial job setup. I have to have a unique X-TB.dwg for each job, because it contains job specific information. So I can't just have the xref in the template file point to the xref in the template folder, because then we'd have a tb-sharing-nightmare.
How can I automate the creation of a new job folder so that I can set things up nicely?
1) New job folder will contain X-TB.dwg
2) New job folder will contain T-01.dwg
3) A-01.dwt will be in template folder on server so users can hit 'new' and use that template for every new drawing.
4) Not resort to users copying drawing from a template folder, because that means the templates can get hosed by anyone.
Bonus Question: Can I have a folder on the server that only _I_ can access, but still have other users use files from it remotely? To clarify: Can I have a drawing in a restricted folder that the user does not have rights to access, and have a tool palette access the blocks within those drawings? I want to start implementing parts of the block library I've been working on and of -all- things, that's the last thing I want someone being able to hose.
Any ideas/help/experience?