It may not always be practical to use the ProjectWise Network Configuration Settings dialog on every client computer that needs to connect to the ProjectWise Design Integration Server. For one reason, you might have too many users that need to connect to the server. Or maybe your users need to connect to multiple ProjectWise Design Integration Servers. Or maybe your ProjectWise Design Integration Server is on a computer that you do not want users to have direct access to.

In these situations it is better to set up a ProjectWise Gateway Service on the same subnet as your clients, and then configure the ProjectWise Gateway Service so that it gets the datasource lists from one or more ProjectWise Design Integration Servers. By default, the ProjectWise Gateway Service (like the ProjectWise Design Integration Server) also broadcasts configuration information to clients using UDP. Ultimately this makes configuration much easier, since you can set up one ProjectWise Gateway Service that connects to as many ProjectWise Design Integration Servers as you like, and the only configuration you need to perform on your clients' computers is the installation of the client software itself. Also, users who need to access multiple servers will experience faster datasource list refreshing when using the ProjectWise Gateway Service instead of the ProjectWise Network Configuration Settings dialog.

If you have ProjectWise Administrator installed on the same computer as ProjectWise Gateway Service, you can also use the New Datasource Wizard in ProjectWise Administrator to create a link to a datasource located on another server. Afterwards, ProjectWise Explorer clients on the same subnet as the ProjectWise Gateway Service will automatically see the linked datasource the next time they refresh their datasource list in ProjectWise Explorer.