About Rapid File Access

Rapid File Access (RFA) enables users to view CAD files directly from the Designer Central stores without checking out the files to local disks.

This feature creates hardlinks within the stores to view the required files.

In case the FCS and FTP servers are running on the same machine, then the System Administrator must create folders for each Designer Central user on the designated FCS (File Collaboration Server), which must be on the same network as the client machines. Each FCS requires an application server to create the hardlinks. For details on installing and setting up the server, see the ENOVIA Live Collaboration Installation Guide.

If FCS and FTP are different, then the user needs to deploy RFA server on FTP locations and each Designer Central user also needs a directory or folder on the FTP Server. Name of this folder should be the same as the ENOVIA user name. Each FTP server needs its own hardlink root path, user subdirectories, and application server.

When creating the directories for each user under the hardlink root directory, the name of the user's directory must be their Designer Central login name. For example, if you have users Designer1 and Designer2, then you would create these directories:


  • C:\Hardlinks\Designer1 with read-only network permission allowed to Designer1 and no permission allowed to other users and
  • C:\Hardlinks\Designer2 with read-only network permission allowed to Designer2 and no permission allowed to other users.

Hardlinks is the name of the hardlink root path where all of the user directories are created.

The user must only have read access, not write access, to the hardlink directory. However, if the user is actually logging in from the computer where the hardlink directory is defined, that user then requires full access permission to the hardlink directory. In general, the computer used for the hardlink directories should not be used by users to access hardlinks.

For RFA setup in Windows systems, the file store and hardlinks directory must be on NTFS directory. If the hardlink root path will be accessed by the client via UNC Path, then share all user directories separately. Otherwise, if the hardlink root path is accessible to the client via a mapped drive, then share the hardlink root path. Give read-only permission to user subdirectories to the corresponding network users.

Automatic RFA Updates

Instead of requiring users to manually run a Design Change Report to determine which designs need updating, you can set the DSCAutoRFAUpdate job to run at regularly-scheduled intervals. ENOVIA recommends that updates be run over the weekend.

For each execution, the program logs into ENOVIA and for each user:

Checks out the working set to get the list of files checked out to the RFA directory.

Runs the Design Change Report only on the objects found in Step 1.

Adds each RFA link that needs to be updated to the IEF-AutoRFAUpdate attribute on the user's LCO.

Reports a success or error message.

When the user logs into Designer Central, if any designs are listed in the IEF-AutoRFAUpdate attribute in the LCO, the obsolete RFA links in the users RFA directory are updated. The user sees a progress bar until the process completes. After the update, the values in the IEF-AutoRFAUpdate attribute are deleted. For subsequent logins, the RFA update is not executed unless the automatic updater has run again and repopulated the IEF-AutoRFAUpdate attribute.

See Configuring Automatic RFA Updates for instructions.