JacobCarter

Hello! The intended design is that you should not have to do much, if anything, to manage your assets unless you want to. If you have not encountered a need to do so, it is ok to just not worry about it. Files are only added here if they are intentionally added by a user, or if said file is needed by a plan or layout. We also try to cleanup assets that are no longer needed. Also note that a large chunk of assets are what we consider communal, or in other words they are owned by Chief Architect Software and are automatically distributed to all users via the web. These tend to be assets needed by our default templates. We are also currently looking at tools to improve the management experience here for those who do want to manage them.

Hello! They are indeed different files. The system allows for files to have the same name, so we do not prevent it. That said, our intended design is that auto generated names will be unique, and we expect to be warning users before a duplicate name is created. That said, it is easy to move a file from one project/folder to another resulting in two files with the same name. If you notice anything that is not following this intended design let us know so we can fix it!

Hello! The design intent for the Common Documents location is to be a place you can put plans that you want to link to from more than one Project. Note that typically plans and layouts can only be linked together if they exist in the same Project. We currently do not have the ability to link to PDF's that are stored in the project browser, instead requiring that the PDF be moved to the asset browser for usage (right click the PDF in the project browser and select "Move to Assets"). We are aware this is a bit of a pain point and are looking at ways to improve it moving forward. For now we encourage putting any non plan/layout files that do not need to be linked to, but are useful to have together with the plans/layouts, into the Project. As for the folders on the left, clicking one of them will filter your project browser to only show the Projects that are associated with that folder. The "Common Documents" and "Plan and Layout Templates" are not currently able to be associated with those folders. Let us know if that is something you think would be useful to your workflow! Note that some users prefer to not see the "Common Documents" or "Plan and Layout Templates" at all, which can be controlled in the preferences dialog under "Project Browser". See the checkbox: "Show Default Categories".