Maximum Number of Drawings in a REGI

As described above drawings of a specific type will be stored in a given DEPT/REGI.

However, it is not recommended to have too many sub-elements in a DABACON database hierarchy. A maximum of approximately 1000 is normally recommended. If you get more elements than that the performance of the database explorers will be poor. At some point (normally more than 1000 elements) you may also have problems with the DABACON database itself.

This means that you should not store more than a 1000 drawings in a single REGI element. Since you are very likely to have more than 1000 drawings of some types, Marine Drafting will solve this by automatically creating new REGIs when one has become ‘full’. The new REGIs will have the same name as the original one but with a numbered suffix. Following the example above where the REGI for General Drawings is ‘MarDwg’ then new REGIs will be named: MarDwg, MarDwg_001, MarDwg_002, MarDwg_003

There is a Drafting default keyword controlling the maximum number of drawings saved in a REGI:

MAX_DWGS_IN_REGI

The recommended value is 1000, which is also the default value.

Please note that the Open Drawing function in Marine Drafting will still find all drawings of a specific type since in looks in the entire MDB not only in a specific DEPT/REGI.

One issue with this approach is possible name conflicts. Assume this scenario;

1. User A creates a new drawing. Marine Drafting finds that the current REGI is full and creates a new: MarDwg_002, for instance.

2. User B creates a new general drawing and also in this session Marine Drafting creates a new REGI called MarDwg_002.

3. User A saves his drawing.

4. User B saves his drawing. He will now get a name conflict in DABACON. The dialog box in Marine Drafting will say something like Failed to save the drawing to the PADD database. Possible reason: There is a name clash, please use Save as.... There will also be an error message in the message window stating that there is a name conflict regarding MarDwg_002.

This scenario obviously creates a problem. To avoid any name conflicts we recommend that you create a number of versions of the REGI element in advance using the naming principle described above. This will help avoiding the name conflict.