• TechNotes
• Relative and Absolute Paths of Drawings in ArchiCAD

The paths of external drawing’s source files can be stored with two options in ArchiCAD: “Store as relative to project” or absolute. These options can be set at placing of drawing in “Place Drawing” dialogue or in case of selected drawing in the “Drawing Settings” dialogue This property of path has a special meaning. ArchiCAD uses the paths of these files as absolute paths after a plan loaded. These paths and the path of project are stored in the project file (pln, plp, plc, etc,…) at saving. When this project is opened the next time paths having the option “Store as relative to project” are rebuilt related to the stored project path. These options allow the portability of projects use certain conventions: 1.) If the project file and referred files are on same disk, it is recommended to use relative paths. You can copy or move the framework to other disk or folder, ArchiCAD will find the referred files. In case of multiple platforms using these relative paths means certain platform independence. Using of relative paths you attend to move the project file to other folder with together the referred files else the paths become unavailable. In this case you can repair them with “Read from…” command in ”Drawing manager palette” or in Warning dialogue pops up at loading plan. Naturally you can “relink” the affected drawings too.

2.) If the referred files are on other disk or have network path, it is recommended to use absolute paths. For portability you should use the same disk(s) (for example the “C:”) on used computers to store the referred files.

3.) Teamwork project: The 1) and 2) points are valid, if you don’t want to save client file (plc), else you should use absolute path only. Using of relative path in that case can generate unavailable paths.