Under the Hood

Feature Friday: Are you Affected by Effectivity?

Many years ago, in my school English lessons, I was taught the difference between the words ‘affect’ and ‘effect’. Even to this day, though, I’ve never been quite sure of their proper usage, and often find myself being corrected on it. One thing I am certain of, though, is the powerful effect of ‘Date Effectivity’ in PLM 360, and how it can positively affect the product development process (or should that be ‘affect’ and ‘effect’?).

Date Effectivity is a function which is applied to a Bill of Materials (BoM), and was introduced in the recent latest release of PLM 360. This capability allows a particular revision of a component part or subassembly to be assigned ‘effectivity’ dates which, essentially, define a period of time during which that item is valid within that BoM. When a BoM contains that item, it will show whatever revision of it is relevant at that point in time. You can choose to view such a BoM as it would appear at a given point in the past, present, or future. This capability allows improved and more flexible planning, for example for Manufacturing and Purchasing departments, and more accurate traceability of previous configurations of a BoM.

Further details of how this powerful new capability works is outlined in our PLM TV User Briefing video …

 

 

System Administrators can choose whether to enable this capability, and where, in the release cycle, it comes into play. Effectivity is configured in the Lifecycle Editor facility of the Setup menu. Within the editor, we can switch the ability to apply date effectivity on at any one or more of the release lifecycle stages. For example, if we want to enable it at the ‘Production’ stage, we right-click at that point to edit it …

 

 

… then simply click on the ‘Effectivity’ tick box, and select ‘Accept’ to enable it …

 

 

Once enabled, every time a user signs off the revisioning step of the Change Order workflow to move an item to ‘Production’ status, they will have the option to set a date effectivity.

So, if you’re managing Bills of Materials today in PLM 360, be sure to check out date effectivity, and see how it can really affect the effectiveness of your product development process (please correct me if the grammar in my last sentence is wrong!).

-- Gavin England

-- Photo: Dictionary.com

I need to check out what now? (Updating iParts and iAssemblies)

So you just opened up an iPart, went into a table and changed a bunch of members hey?  Not sure which ones, was it important to remember?  No, not really, Vault will figure it out for you.

That's right, Vault 2013 is now smart enough to automatically check out and check in any new or modified ipart and iassembly family members.  

Simply go into your family table and make the required member change, regenerate the files through Inventor (select all your members from under the table icon, right click, "generate members") and check in the factory. Vault checks out only those newly generated or modified members and includes them as part of the check in operation.

This is a big step forward from the workflow in previous releases where changed members would need to be identified, checked out, regenerated and checked back in manually to capture the updates, or perhaps you were one of the many who created an enormous assembly file containing all the possible file instances and assembly iterations for the purpose of keeping everything up to date.

This new automated member check out is coupled with better messaging along with improved place and replace member workflows which support the download of associated version/revision of the member to local disk.

This means unlike previous versions users can now grab an earlier release of the ipart or iassembly and have the associated versions retrieved.  

We feel these small changes will make a big difference in using and more importantly updating your Inventor families with Vault and get you back to designing.

Autodesk Vault Video Series on CAD Integrations

Introducing a new series of Vault tutorials posted to TheVaultKnowsAll: Module 3, Capturing your Concepts with Autodesk Vault. This is a 10 part video module that covers a day-in-the-life from a CAD users perspective. Topics include In-CAD access to Vault Projects, Visual Data Management, Revision Table integration, and Sheet Set Manager integration.

-Brian Schanen

Vault 2012 Revision Block Integration

The new release of Autodesk Vault 2012 Workgroup, Collaboration, and Professional bring a deeper level of integration with both Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD. Vault now provides support to populate the Revision Table within an Inventor .idw/.dwg or AutoCAD dwg. From Vault, you can map the Revision assigned to a file and have it reflect the revision-bumping rules. Bottom line, not only do Title Blocks get updated, but the Rev Table will update or add row to match the correct Revision level in Vault. The benefit? This automation removes another step in the management of files from the users’ workflow, and that’s a very good thing.

Administration

Configuring the Rev Block integration begins in Vault. Log in with Administrative rights, and get to Tools>Administration>Vault Settings, Behaviors tab. In the Properties area, click Revision Table. If you haven't set up Rev Tables, you’ll be met with an initially collapsed dialog box. Check the box to Enable Revision Table Control.

The dialog box transforms into a new window, and a prompt comes up. For the interim, click Yes to accept the default values. You can always modify them later.

Now, the next dialog box is a glimpse into the mapping of Vault intrinsic (system) properties that will be directly mapped to the Revision Table. Toward the bottom of the dialog are option to limit the row count, etc.

Click OK, and your work here in Vault’s administration is done. Time to apply this in CAD.

Application

Ok, now it’s time to use this on a drawing. I’ve chosen Inventor for the following sample. Open an Inventor idw or dwg that is under Revision management. From the Annotate ribbon, select the Vault Revision feature.

Place the Revision table on the drawing, perhaps upper-left corner. The Rev table reflects the up-to-date data from Vault. Save, check in, repeat for all drawings.

Vault family 2012 family takes Revision management further by integrating with core CAD functionality, reducing manual efforts by drafters and designers.

Next, more new in-CAD enhancements with the 2012 release of Vault.

 

-Brian Schanen

Vault Implementation Punchlist posted

Happy Monday All. I’m still going through archives and digging up useful docs to share with fellow Vault implementers out there (and you know who you are…) Today’s post includes a sample Vault implementation punchlist for documenting the rollout of your Vault. Enjoy!

Download Vault 2011 Punchlist worksheet

-Brian Schanen

Category Planning Worksheet

Hello fellow Vault enthusiasts! I’ve been doing some spring cleaning here (yeah, I know it's not spring yet), and ran across some of the docs that I’ve used in my travels for Vault implementations. I’ll be posting these from time to time, and the first one helps capture Categories/Behaviors for files in Vault. Hope these are of some use. Let me know what y’all think…

  Download Worksheet for Planning Behaviors-web

-Brian Schanen

Secrets of the Vault Configuration File

Today we’ll discuss a significant feature for those who count themselves Vault Administrators. I have always recommended having a “Test Vault” for sampling new functionality, training, testing the waters, etc. This means you can validate new workflows by using house money, so to speak. Then you can save all of your hard work out and import it into a new Vault, and move forward with the implementation, hitting the ground running. With the release of Vault Family 2010 (except base Vault) we had this functionality. Recall this earlier post for review.

The 2011 Vault Family has some enhancements to this wonderful feature, and this is the focus of this post. First, let’s examine the information captured in the configuration file (.cfg):

• DWF Publish Options
• Lifecycle Definitions
• Revision Schemes
• User Defined Properties
• Property Mapping
• Categories
• Category Assignment Rules

To export a configuration from one Vault to another, log in to the ADMS (Autodesk Data Management Server) console. Choose the specific Vault database and right click. Choose Export configuration and save this to disk. Hint: save this to a public location, fir instance C:\Users\Public\Documents.

Now, to leverage this on the same ADMS in another Vault, you can right click another Vault and select Import Configuration. Or, you may create a new Vault and during the process, use a custom configuration file. see image below:

Only objects not already existing in the target Vault are imported. Existing object with same name will not be imported or modified. No Users or Groups set in the Life Cycle Definitions security for the states and the transitions will be imported, but will have to be defined BEFORE import. If you are keeping this on the same ADMS, this is not an issue. But what if you are targeting this cfg onto another server/ADMS?

As mentioned, what is not stored in the configuration is Users and Groups – which of course are important in connection to Life Cycle Definition , where the permission are a great part of the setup. But this can be accomplished any way by planning a little ahead and using generic user and group names, which after the import are renamed and added with more users.

First if all – if you are going to export/import configurations remember to start by creating a COPY of the standard setup element be it a Life cycle definition of a revision scheme. The reason is during a import to a new Vault, the ADMS will always first import the custom settings and THEN run a stored procedure to recreate the standard elements – which means all customization will be over written unless named differently.

The Process of creating a Generic setup is:

Start by creating a number of Generic Groups (and the corresponding users needed to create a group) like indicated below:

Groups: Generic names indicating Engineer, Manager, Sales and Production in example below. Add the correct roles on Group level	Users: These user names are the same profiles as for groups, and are just needed as placeholders to be able to create Group

Best practice is to use Groups when assigning permission and security to Lifecycle Schemes, and to apply user roles on a group level rather than on a user level.

Now develop the Configuration and save it out in a .cfg file in ADMS. Also make a Backup as . cfg files cannot be migrated to a new release. Instead you migrate the Backup and then save a new .cfg file from the next release.

When preparing a new Vault, start by creating it in ADMS Console, add the Users and the Groups with EXACTLY the same names as you used when exporting the .cfg in the first place.

Then use Import Configuration, and you should have a empty Vault with all the above settings preset, and the last step is to rename the Groups to relevant names, and to add users to the group.

This also work for imported Active Directory users and groups, and you just include the AD group into the relevant Vault Group, without further need for changes.

 

-Brian Schanen

Matching Vault's Revision to a CAD File's Revision

This is one topic that I’ve been asked about many time, and perhaps it’s time for a deep dive into it. What you’re about to see is for Vault Family 2011 and does not apply to Vault Family 2010 products. There was a change in the Vault Properties engine and let’s just say its better, more flexible, in 2011 but there is an additional step to take over the 2010 release. In short, we’ll need to make a User Defined Property (a.k.a UDP) to expose the Rev from CAD, and then making Vault’s revision equal that rev from the file.

So, how do you know when you need to do this? If you’ve been using AutoCAD or Inventor and you have properties in the files already that hold a Revision value, and you check it into Vault, you may see the error in the image below:

Let’s talk about why this is happening. It’s usually after categorizing files upon check in to Vault. This typically assigns a Lifecycle Definition, therefore a Lifecycle State. And it also assigns a Revision Scheme, and that Revision scheme – whether Alphabetical or Numeric – has a starting value. Chances are, if you’ve been using an “honor system” Rev method outside of Vault, the files might not always be at this start value like ‘A’ or ‘1’. They may look like the screen cap below, which is a view of an Inventor assembly in which components have a variety of Rev level.

You have a few options. One of which is to accept Vault’s starting revision of A or 1 and overwrite what’s in the CAD file upon the next synchronization of properties. If that’s alright, stop reading here. If preserving the CAD rev level is important, read on…

First, log in with an Administrative account. Go to Tools>Administration>Vault Settings>Behaviors tab and click the Properties button. Create a new User Defined Property, I suggest ‘CAD Rev’ to make this neutral and possibly mapped to Inventor, AutoCAD, etc. Make it Text type and apply it to all Categories.

Jump over to the Mapping tab. Add a mapping, select the property drop down and import properties from Vault as below.

In my example, I am selecting an Inventor file, but an AutoCAD file with attributed title blocks or even fields, custom properties would work the same.

Now, this mapping is a one-way street. All we need to do is get the CAD file revision exposed so we can fast track Vault’s rev level to it. It’s important to note that Vault will take over Revision Management after that point.

Click OK and close all dialog boxes, return to Vault Explorer. Back to the first image in this post, we had a non-compliant equivalence state, that red bang symbol that’s really hard to ignore is there in the Properties grid. You can target files one-at-a-time, or you can use a clever little search trick to isolate these files.

Start a search using the Advanced tab. First criteria is the noncompliant equivalence, and add to that another criteria where your CAD Rev property is greater than the rev level of you rev scheme. In my example and image below, any noncompliant prop and CAD Rev greater than A (using an Alpha scheme) yields the files listed below. If a Numeric scheme, use greater than 1, and so on.

Ok, getting to the good part. Select a file and click the Revise button. At the bottom of the list is an option to Revise from user defined properties.

Add the new CAD Rev property from the left to right side and click OK.

The rev value from the CAD files will appear as the new Revision values. Anything that will change will appear as bold. Click OK, and your done with this set.

Finally, you can expose the CAD Rev column in any window in Vault, and I suggest this for Admin usage only. Eventually, you can turn this CAD Rev column off once all file rev levels are matched up with Vault. Remember that Vault will take over Revision Management from this point forward.

-Brian Schanen

Vault and iParts – Revision Management

Revision Management of Inventor Configurations

Provided you’ve read up on Inventor iParts and Lifecycles in the previous post, the next thing you’re wondering about is Revisions. Like Lifecycles, each Category has an option to assign a Revision scheme upon categorization. There is also ability to opt out of defining a Revision scheme. You should assign the default Rev scheme to None for the Configuration Member Category, because the generated Members will always get their Rev value from the Factory anyway. This way you will not encounter non-compliant property matches in Vault.

The Configuration Factory category however should follow a predefined Revision scheme (alpha or numeric) as you’ll want to control revisions of these files, thus leveraging the Document Management revision-biased functionality.

As for the Member files, they will get a value in their Rev field (which you can’t modify anyway) from the table in the Factory. Still with me so far?

Next, we’ll take a tour of Category Assignment rules to automate the whole process. Again, stay tuned…

-Brian Schanen

Vault Fun Fact – Thumbnail displays in Vault

Today’s tip can be categorized under Vault personalization. Autodesk Vault has the ability to display the thumbnail of a file on the History tab of the lower pane. As versions and revisions stack up, this image will display each with an image of the last saved file. A nice feature, but when you really rack up the versions, this can take a while to load as Vault needs to retrieve each image from the server. Let’s examine an alternative to showing these thumbnails, yet still getting that quick image of the file that we’ve grown to like.

This will involve viewing the new Properties Grid (2011 release) on the right side, which is the default location. At the bottom of the grid there is a tiny arrow – see image. Click this arrow and the bar will jump up. A little.

Now drag the bar upwards to show the entire thumbnail. You can also turn off the thumbnail column on the History tab, as this one is larger and easier to view. This is a nice enhancement, and you can still cycle through the previous versions if needed. Simply click on the version in the History window and the thumbnail will update.

 

-Brian Schanen