Track revisions

View a panel’s revision history, record why it changed, and print the history for any set of panels.

Revisions are design changes made to a panel after it has been drawn to specification and released for fabrication — tracked for budgetary and legal reasons. ConstructiVision tracks them at two levels, and both are automatic-first:

  • a revision log in the drawing itself — number, date, and your reason for each change, with a revision stamp on the final drawing;

  • revision files on disk — every panel save keeps the previous drawing as a sibling file, so editing a panel never destroys the revision you already issued.

The Revision History dialog

Open it from the Revisions button on the Main Panel Details dialog, or stand-alone from the CV menu / toolbar (Revision History — a panel drawing must be open). It also opens by itself: when a panel that already carries revisions is changed and redrawn, the dialog appears so the change gets recorded; the first time a panel is changed on a later date, ConstructiVision first asks — “This Drawing has been revised. Do you want to add a Revision Stamp?” — and the original drawing date is never altered.

The dialog is a ten-row log. Rows already recorded display their stored number, date, and reason. If the drawing has unsaved changes, the first empty row is pre-filled with the next revision number and today’s date, and the cursor lands in its Reason field — type why the panel changed and confirm with OK. If the drawing is clean, no new row is offered — there is nothing to record.

Field

What it does

Rev #

Assigned automatically — the previous count plus one. Not editable.

Date

Stamped automatically with the current date (M/D/YYYY). Not editable.

Reason

Your description of the change — the only field you type. Confirming with the Reason left blank records no revision.

What gets saved, and when

  • The log lives in the drawing. Revision entries are stored in the panel drawing’s title block (its revision box), and a Revision Stamp showing the newest revision number and date is placed on the final drawing once any revision data exists. Entries are committed to the drawing when the panel next redraws — which the normal flow (edit the panel → OK → redraw) does for you. Record revisions as part of that flow rather than as a stand-alone step.

  • Every save keeps the previous drawing. When a panel saves as mark.dwg, the prior mark.dwg is first rotated to a numbered mark.bakNNN sibling in the project folder (higher numbers are more recent). This is an invariant, not a best effort: if the backup copy cannot be made — folder read-only, disk full, file locked — the save is aborted rather than allowed to overwrite the prior revision, and your edits stay intact in the session so you can clear the condition and save again.

  • Step back and forward. Type CV-REVERT at the command line to swap the newest backup in as the current drawing (the current one moves to a mark.fwdNNN redo slot), and CV-RESTORE to step forward again — an undo / redo across saves, done purely by moving complete drawing files between slots.

Notes

  • Ten entries per panel. The log holds up to ten revisions — plan revision numbering accordingly on long-lived projects.

  • The panel mark ties it together. The mark (Set panel marks and gridline marks) names the .dwg, its .bak revision siblings, and the drawing the log is stamped into — an established panel is never silently renamed by a save.

  • The .bak siblings are complete drawings. Each one is the panel exactly as it was at that save. Prefer CV-REVERT / CV-RESTORE over renaming files by hand — the commands keep the undo / redo stacks consistent.

  • Recording is deliberate. Only a row with a typed Reason is recorded — reopening the dialog and cancelling, or confirming with the Reason blank, adds nothing to the log.