Many third party editors support hybrid editing. A hybrid editor enables you to work on a file that contain both raster and vector data. Some of these editors keep the raster data in one file and the vector files in another file. The two files are put together by means of a third file - a reference file. Orbit Front keeps all these three files in one file, called a compound file (See Working with compound files). The compound file contains all three files and information on which application to use when editing the compound file.
A typical hybrid editing session would include the following steps. A drawing is scanned with Orbit Pro and stored in the archive. The file is retrieved from the Orbit Front archive and an external tool (a hybrid editor) is launched. Orbit Front exports the raster file to a newly created directory in your temporary directory. In the external editor, you must ensure that all new files (vector file and reference file) are stored in this directory. When you have finished editing and exit the external editor, Orbit Front will detect that the external editing session have been concluded, and will prompt you for which action to take on the edited files. Press OK to accept changes to be imported to the database. Orbit Front will detect that the newly created directory now contains several files and you must decide how the files should be handled. Make sure that the right hand list box in the extended import dialog contain the raster file, the vector file and the reference file. The file, which should be given as input when launching the external editor (In most cases the reference- or vector file) must be the first item in the list box.
All three files are now combined in a compound file and stored in the archive. The next time a compound file should be edited, you only need to double click on the compound file icon in the image view.