Reusing a quota definition file in another project

If you have a number of projects that have quotas based on the same combinations of variables, you can save yourself time by copying an existing .mqd file into the new project rather than recreating the file from scratch. A typical example would be when you have a number of projects that all require quotas on the same demographic variables. As long as the demographic variables are the same in all projects, you can create the .mqd for one project and then copy it to all the other projects' source directories. If the targets vary between projects, or you want to add extra quotas for some projects, you can edit the copied .mqd file to make these adjustments as you would on the original file.

Note The .mqd file contains a number of references to the project name. If you copy .mqd files between projects, your first step after copying must be to edit the new file and change these references to point to the new project name. For example, if you copy cars.mqd into the travel source directory, you must change its name to travel.mqd and then edit it to replace all references to cars with references to travel.

The .mqd file is a text file containing XML code so you can edit it using any text editor. Lines in the file are very long, so it is usually best to make the replacements using a global search and replace command. You must be very careful when editing the file because if you make the wrong changes, the file can become unusable.