Under the Hood

I’m going to need to see some ID

What’s the best way to identify your assembly components in the Inventor Vault Browser?  I mean, these structures get big and it’s not always clear what is what…

Some time back we made this a lot easier by implementing component selection highlighting (select it in the model and it highlights in the Vault browser or vice versa), then we added Vault options in the right click context menus that meant you could carry out Vault tasks direct from the Inventor structure browser or the model itself.  If this was still not clear you could always use datacards as a tool to cycle through the model and find what you are looking for.

A release or two back we started to provide more information inside the Vault Browser itself, giving users the ability to add limited Vault properties to the instance names, now you could append the default instance name with the document lifecycle state and revision.  This was a great help in making decisions about file access and modification but did not address actual file identification. 

New in 2014 we have extended the browser properties and made this completely flexible – users can now select to add any additional Vault properties or choose an alternate display name all together.

This last option is ideal for companies using automatic file numbering which provides a nicely uniform but altogether indecipherable file identifier – using part number, stock number or description value instead of a file name in this case should make it much simpler to identify browser instances and reduce the stumbling around in semi-darkness.

-Allan

Happy New Year News for EdgeCAM Users

Early this month EdgeCAM announced it's latest software release will work directly with Autodesk Vault 2013, enabling users to store their CAM data alongside their Autodesk design files.

EdgeCAM is a certified Autodesk Inventor partner and is designed to work seamlessly with Inventor models, generating and updating machine tool paths, making this integration a must have for existing EdgeCAM, Inventor and Vault users.  The EdgeCAM integration uses familiar Vault commands and workflows making it simple to use and is available across all versions of Vault.

More information is available at the EdgeCAM site here.

-Allan

 

Photo: Fagor Automation 

Tables with Style (Revision table templates for AutoCAD)

This tip comes to us courtesy of Alan Ho (different spelling of Allan and all round nicer person than your's truly), this was in answer to a specific customer enquiry but thought it might be a good one to share.  Be warned - there is some xml text changes required so if this is your first time maybe remember to save a copy of the original.

Within AutoCAD, the revision table styles (by default) are stored in the form of DWGs which are namely:

• 'vaac_RevBlockImperial.dwg’ - For English units based drawings
• 'vaac_RevBlockMetric.dwg' - For Metric units based drawings

These two template DWGs are installed with the Vault add-in and reside in the users' application data directory: "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD <version> Vault AddIn\" if you are on Windows 7 and above.

Within these two templates each user can change / tweak the revision table style to their preference or actually reset the style by removing these files (they are reloaded with add-in use).

If however you would like to have the Vault revision table point to the style files in another, possibly shared location, this can also be done using the following steps:

• Open up the file 'acad.exe.config' from the AutoCAD installation directory (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD <Version>). You can use any XML editor or notepad to do this.  

        

• With the file opened. Insert two XML tags for both the English and Metric units based templates under the <appSettings> tag. (Refer to highlighted example text below; just swap out the values for the location of your revision table style files)

• Save the file and re-launch AutoCAD (and the Vault add-in).

• The next time a Vault Revision Table is inserted, it will pull the new style from these templates in the location specified.

 -Allan

Speaking of AEC integration's (Another Vault Collaboration AEC Customer)

As promised, this week we feature the second of our latest AEC customer testamonials, Maser Consulting.

Maser Consulting is a leading consulting engineering firm serving the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic US regions since 1984. Maser Consulting is a multi-discipline firm with a unique balance of public and private sector experience. They collaborate on over 1000 projects / year and are ready to deploy Vault company wide this summer.

 

Stay tuned for more as the adoption of Vault in AEC / ENI continues.  

Speaking of AEC integration's (Vault Collaboration AEC Customers)

Speaking of AEC integration's, two customer testimonial videos have recently been published highlighting new Vault Collaboration AEC customers.  The first to be featured today is Cardno out of Australia.

Cardno, originally founded as a civil engineering consultancy is now is an international, integrated professional services provider locally delivering the specialist advice necessary to create or improve the physical and social infrastructure that underpins communities around the world.  They have more than 6500 employees in over 180 offices across projects in 85 countries, and have just completed a project with Vault across 9 groups.  The video summarizes their results. 

 

 

New to the neighborhood (Autodesk Vault Microstation Integration)

New to the Vault integration family is Microstation, servicing those with legacy dgn content or working with dgn content suppliers. 

This integration allows Microstation users to log in, check in and out directly from the application and understands file dependencies (uses and where used).

In addition to the basic functionality the add-in permits users to manage lifecycle changes in product and utilize productivity tools such as autoloader and batch plotting of dgn files.

This addition to the family broadens the reach of Vault in the AEC space to better capture all the project related documentation.

Photo: Gothick Matt

Places to drive in Vault (Autodesk Vault Civil 3D integration)

Don’t want a building – want to make a road?  Well no problems, the Autodesk Vault Civil 3D integration has also had a facelift for 2013.

Changes have been made here to the open from Vault dialog bringing Civil 3D in line with AutoCAD and integrates a more consistent grid experience for users with improved searching and file details. 

In addition to securely managing surfaces, alignments etc, this release increases support for file dependencies to include point clouds.  

Outside of the CAD integration itself, it's worth mentioning again that changes to the Project folder lifecycle control will now play a major part in better identifying the state of Civil 3D projects as they progress from conception to completion.  

Places to walk around in Vault (Navisworks Integration Enhancements)

When it comes to putting your project together, aggregating everyone’s design so you can find your clashes, check the progress or walk around your new building Navisworks is hard to beat and it is even easier now to control all your model resources through Vault.

The Navisworks Vault integration now steps up to support a full range of file types to append in the model including native Revit file support and allows users to search the Vault from the open and append dialogs, providing a much more powerful and consistent, user friendly experience.

Navisworks now also includes a Vault browser to view content and status directly from within the application, helping to ensure you have the latest and greatest as well as adding life cycle management tools to change document states without leaving Navisworks.

 

Places to live and work in Vault (Revit Integration Enhancements)

 A number of user requested improvements have been made to the Vault Revit integration specifically around support for drawing sheets. 

The 2013 Vault Revit integration now permits users to leverage the job processor for visualization file creation, improving productivity and publishes, in addition to the 3d model, 2d sheets which are attached to the model within Vault.

Leveraging the new folder level lifecycle controls this becomes a more complete deliverable management story, using these sheets for review, markup or linked to create complete drawing sets or document packages.

Inside the product itself the process of adding Revit family files to the model has been simplified as has the add files to Vault workflow.  From an implementation perspective, side by side install process with Revit server has also been addressed.

Take a rest IT admin guy! (Forward compatibility)

Tired after your big day upgrading your Vault server, watching the migration bar slide across the screen?  You just want to go home and lie down, maybe play some second life?  You certainly don’t want to be walking around and updating client machines do you?

Well good news, any client side installs you have that currently connect to ADMS 2012 will, without any further updates connect to ADMS 2013.  This means that if you have back patched Vault 2011 or using Vault 2012 currently these integrations will continue to work.

Before you ask, no, this doesn’t mean that Vault Basic 2012 will connect to Vault Professional 2013 ADMS but, Vault Professional 2012 will.  And no, you are not going to get all the fancy new client side functionality but what you will get is some additional time to migrate across your entire work force.  This means we get the database heavy lifting over and done with out of hours, you can set up our CAD and Vault deployments and gradually do the client side rounds to deploy the full 2013 solution, typically CAD and PDM at the same time.  

Not bad huh – same amount of work but carried out at your convenience, a rested IT Admin is a happy IT Admin!