Moving referenced masters to iMac from mac book air

Question

I have searched different forums and posts, and still cannot find the most appropriate way to accomplish what I am trying to do.
I currently have my aperture library on my mac book air with masters and all revisions as referenced files located on external HD. I recently purchased the new iMac with enough storage to keep my masters on the internal HD. I was able to copy my library from MB Air to iMac, and now facing a dilemma what is the best way to move my masters with all revisions to the internal drive on my iMac, and the second question, would it be possible later on to keep them on two places, one as referenced to my MBA on external HD, and the second set on my internal HD on iMac as managed.
I would love to take my MBA on a trip as I always do, import my pictures to it's library, and then when I come home - move them to iMac. I think that part could be easily accomplished by exporting the project and re-imiporting it to another computer, and that should update the library????
Does anyone have the same set up, and managed to accomplish what I need.
I am going to throw another wrinkle that might help someone to explain to me if it is reasonable solution.
I could probably archived the current library from MBA and start the new library, maybe it is going to be easier and make Aperture (iPhoto) DB to work a bit faster? But how to move the library along with originals (or maybe it is just a matter of moving the library to the external HD, and done deal), and that the reference iis not going to be broken?
I hope I did not confuse anyone.

Answer 1

Just connect the HD with the referenced originals on it to the iMac and run Aperture with the library you copied over from the Air. Given how OS X and Aperture keeps track of disks there is a good chance that the library will connect to the referenced originals on the HD.  If it does not you will need to reconnect them to the library. Use File->Locate Referenced Files.
Once the originals are connected to the library run File->Consolidate Originals. This will copy the original from the HD and put them into the Aperture library. All aspects of the library will be preserved.
Keeping two libraries on separate system is honestly not one of Apertures strong points. There is no easy built in way to accomplish this. There are workflows that folks have come up with but none are really seamless.  I'd get the library running in the iMac and once that is done you can look into running parallel libraries.
regards