<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Drawing Manager > Technical details > Legacy projects (R32 and older) > The extensions that were made in cadett ELSA R33

A major upgrade of the Drawing Manager was made in cadett ELSA R33. The functionality was vastly extended. Automatic conversion for old projects was part of the upgrade, which made it possible to seamlessly continue working with them.

 

In this topic, the differences between R32 and older, and R33 and newer, are discussed. For simplicity, the Drawing Manager in R32 and older is below referred to as "the old Drawing Manager", and the upgraded Drawing Manager in cadett ELSA R33 and newer, is in a corresponding way called "the current Drawing Manager".

 

In the old Drawing Manager, the system for organisation of documents in cadett ELSA was made up in the following way:

 

•A structure with a maximum of two levels with one character each was used mainly for document types. The terms used in cadett ELSA were "drawing class" and "drawing type".

 

•Another independent structure, with a maximum of two levels each containing a maximum of 4 characters, could be used as a counterpart to a plant structure. The terms used in cadett ELSA were "first and second project related drawing type".

 

Those limitations made a complete implementation of more complex designation systems – like for instance KKS – sometimes ungainly and not as perspicuous as desired. A need for an extension was therefore identified. The upgrade of the Drawing Manager that was made in cadett ELSA R33 addressed that need.

 

The two structures (trees) that were used in the old Drawing Manager, with two levels each, were replaced with an arbitrary number of trees (structures) with an arbitrary number of levels, containing in principle an arbitrary number of characters per level. (The maximum number of characters per level is currently 10).

 

The filenames in the old Drawing Manager were composed of drawing class, drawing type, first project related drawing type, second project related drawing type, and finally the sheet number. It was possible to omit parts, and it was also possible to vary the length of the filename, but the sequence was always the one mentioned above.

 

In the current Drawing Manager, the file names can be composed in an arbitrary way when the sequence between the different trees is concerned. Constants are also supported, meaning character positions with a fixed content, something that did not exist in the old Drawing Manager. A current limitation however, is that higher levels in a tree must always be located to the left of lower levels in the same tree.

 

The fact that the functionality was extended in the way that is described above, has a large number of consequences. Most functions in the Drawing Manager were affected and therefore rewritten or heavily modified.

 

New project parameters were needed to configure the new functionality, which also affected the Project module. New functions in the mask file for configuration of the Drawing Manager were added too.