Managing Configuration Files in Centralized WDIR Directories

The RSCM configuration files follow the general WDIR policy for PADS Designer support files. You can maintain a corporate set of configuration files as a template for your users. Local copies of the configuration files overwrite the values in the corporate copy.

You can lock configuration file parameters so the local copy does not overwrite the corporate copy, and you can group configuration file parameters according to users, machines on your network, and operating systems. The general WDIR policy is described in the Search Path Specification (WDIR) topic.

Procedure

Create a read-only directory for the corporate configuration files on a network drive accessible to your users through a UNC path.
Note: You can create multiple corporate directories for RSCM configuration files and reference them in a single WDIR variable, separated by a semi-colon. RSCM reads multiple corporate WDIR directories from right to left, overwriting parameters in that order (see Examples).
Copy the files from a local WDIR directory into your corporate directory so you can use them as a template.
Modify the parameters and be sure to understand how you can lock parameters andgroup parameters to take full advantage of the WDIR policy for RSCM configuration files.
Note: Only the parameters that you modify need to be in the configuration files. RSCM uses either default or local parameters for parameters that are missing from the corporate configuration files.
Modify the WDIR Environment Variable on each local machine. Use the following format:
WDIR=<local_directory>;\\server\<CorpWDIR_directory>;<SDD_HOME>/standard
- local_directory: The WDIR location set during install on the local machine.
- \\server\<CorpWDIR_directory>: Your corporate configuration file area. This directory should be read-only to preserve your control over the configuration files.
- <SDD_HOME>/standard: The install directory of the software. RSCM does not use this directory for configuration files, but the general corporate WDIR policy requires it for other tools.

Examples

This example shows how to use multiple corporate WDIR directories to manage configuration file parameters.

The WDIR environment variable is set as follows:

WDIR=c:\WDIR;\\server\corp_WDIR_1;\\server\corp_WDIR_2;\\server\corp_WDIR_3;c:\MentorGraphics\7.9EE\SDD_HOME\standard

The non-default contents of the four Server.cfg file are shown below in the order that RSCM applies the settings (it is reversed from the environment variable assignment):

\\server\corp_WDIR_3\iCDB\Server\Server.cfg contains the following parameters:

[Logging] 
Level = 2 
 
[Network] 
PortRange* = 10500,10600

\\server\corp_WDIR_2\iCDB\Server\Server.cfg contains the following parameters:

[Network] 
PortRange = 10000,10100 
 
[System] 
AutoBackupSupport = no

\\server\corp_WDIR_1\iCDB\Server\Server.cfg contains the following parameters:

[Logging] 
Level = 5

c:\WDIR\iCDB\Server\Server.cfg contains the following parameters:

[System] 
AutoBackupSupport = yes

RSCM applies configuration settings from all locations in the following order, overwriting any existing values:

\\server\corp_WDIR_3
\\server\corp_WDIR_2
\\server\corp_WDIR_1
c:\WDIR

So the latest set value wins. In other words, except for locked values, entries in local WDIR are the most important, and entries in corp_WDIR_3 are least important.

In this case the effective settings are:

[Logging] 
Level = 5 ; (Set to 2 in corp_WDIR_3, but overwritten in corp_WDIR_1) 
 
[Network] 
PortRange* = 10500,10600 ; (set and LOCKED (*) in corp_WDIR_3, so the different value set in corp_WDIR_2 is discarded) 
 
[System] 
AutoBackupSupport = yes ; (set to "no" in corp_WDIR_2, but overwritten with "yes" in local WDIR)