View Document References

Sometimes, two or more documents may be related to each other. The documents may or may not reside in the same folder. The relationships may be of several kinds. One kind of relationship is content-related. This relationship is characterized by the content of the related documents and is established by the applications used to create the documents. Examples of content-related documents are:

• AutoCAD X-Refs – X-Refs are drawings that either reference other drawings or are themselves referenced by other drawings. This applies to all derivations of AutoCAD, including Architectural and Mechanical Desktop products. Meridian detects three levels of x-ref: the master, the child, and the child of a child.

• AutoCAD overlay drawings – Similar to an x-ref, but does not load or bring any nested x-refs. Only the master and child are detected by Meridian.

• MicroStation X-refs – MicroStation X-refs are drawings that reference other models or layout views.

A second kind of relationship is revision-related. This relationship is characterized by the revisions of related documents and is established by Meridian Enterprise when the revisions or versions are created. Examples of revision-related documents are:

• Derived documents – a new document is derived from an existing document.

• Replacement documents – a new document is created that replaces an existing document.

• Master documents and project copies – one or more copies of a master document are created for concurrent editing in different projects.

A third kind of relationship is business-related. This relationship is characterized by the business processes that use the related documents and must be established by the users of the documents. Examples of business-related documents are:

• Drawings and a bill of materials or sheet schedule.

• Drawings and specifications, installation and operations manuals, or design calculations.

• Project plans, schedules, and meeting minutes.

In order to represent these relationships Meridian Enterprise uses links called references. A reference is a link from one document to another that represents a specific kind of relationship. A document may have any number of references to another document, called outgoing references. Conversely, a document may be referenced by any number of other documents, called incoming references. References between documents are created in the Meridian Enterprise client applications. Meridian can automatically create references for the first two kinds of relationships. The third kind of relationship requires user action. All Meridian Enterprise references are supported by Meridian Portal where they can be viewed as follows.

To view document references:

1. Open the list of documents as described in Find Documents.

2. Click the leftmost property column (not the selection check box) or double-click the row of the document for which you want to view its references.

   The details page of the document slides into view from the right side of the page.

3. Choose between two options:

   • Click the References tab to view a list of documents that the current document references (outgoing).

   • Click the Where Used tab to view a list of documents that reference the current document (incoming).