Under the Hood

DIY Revision Table (Manually updating your revision tables)

From time to time we hear people requesting a way to update the Vault based revision tables without using Job Processor, so this week we post another Alan Ho tip on how to configure Vault to permit manual update of your Inventor revision table.

Once again we are going to dive into a config file to make the change so be sure to make a copy of the file prior to editing, just in case.  The settings are located in the "Connectivity.<Product>.exe.config" file.

This file can be found on your client machine (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Vault <Version 20XX>\Explorer) and the change would would need to be made on or copied to each machine where the user wants to update their revision table via the Sync Properties command.  

The example below is for Vault Professional - "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Vault Professional 2013\Explorer\Connectivity.VaultPro.exe.config" and there are 2 specific keys to change:

• UpdateRevBlockOnSyncProp - This is to turn on the ability to Update the Revision Table on Sync Properties in Vault Client.
• UpdateRevBlockMigrateLatestINV - We do not allow migration of CAD files by default. This flag allows migration of legacy Inventor files to the latest version

   

With the keys updated you should now be able to update the revision table from the "Sync Properties" command in Vault Explorer instead of relying on a Job Processor task.

- Allan

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

Beta Time (Getting access to the 2014 software preview)

Its that time of the year, the first coat of paint has been applied and we are ready, waiting for your feedback before we wheel the new build out of the garage.

If you have the time and interest follow this link to the Autodesk Vault Beta Site where you can enrol, download and start to play around with the 2014 release, providing feedback to the Beta team and participate in private Beta community discussions. 

Head to the Beta site now to learn more.

-Allan

Photo: D Petzold Photography

Gimme my file back! (Undo Checkout and Remove Reservation)

For some reason I have seen enquiries around this issue come up on numerous occasions of late, be it a file that was checked out to an old machine or to a person no longer with the company, you find you cannot check the file back in and edit again.

First off you should be aware that 2 conditions need to be met in order to check in a file.  Vault not only remembers who has a file checked out, but on which machine the file was checked out, this is recorded in the "Checked Out Machine" system property.  Why?  Because this will be the only the machine where the file is write enabled and is presumably being edited, to update the file with its correct modifications and prevent a user accidentally overwriting valid changes the file must be checked back in from this same PC.

If you know a file has not changed or are not worried about the file modifications you can of course log into Vault as the user who has the file checked out (or have them log in from another PC) and undo the check out.  This will restore the last file version to latest and enable others to check in the file - read more about Undo File Check Out here.

What happens though if the user is on holidays or has left the company?  Typically your administrator should be able to change the users password and re-enable the account for you to access (users are never deleted from Vault) but you will likely not have access to any modified files so it will probably be easier to have the administrator Remove File Reservation.  This command ignores both the checked out user and checked out machine to forcibly remove the file check out.

The file will then, as in the case of Undo File Check Out, revert to the last version and become available for check out.  More information can be found on Remove File Reservation here.

-Allan

Photo: Toffehoff

Old Trick for New Dogs (Copy design shortcuts)

This tip is as old as copy design itself but I am reminded from time to time that these shortcuts are neither obvious or widely used so I thought I would reach back into the archives and shine a light on the find / replace and multi-select operations in copy design.

When it comes to naming the new files in Copy Design (please head over to the idea exchange for comments on integrating automated file naming) this can be a arduous process in a large copy design operation and in many cases follows a pro forma approach, like changing the project or plant number at the start of the file name.  This is where the replace command comes in handy - hover your mouse over the file name column without selecting the current cell (and holding your tongue correctly) right click to get the context menu.

You can now change the copy status of the file, expand / collapse the tree, but more interestingly find, find next or replace - select replace and you can now search for and replace an existing value.  Simple, in one operation you can rename all of your new files and this will work for your folder locations too.

Now what about actually selecting files to copy?  There is a quicker way to do this as well.  

Holding down the CTRL key while you select a parent files copy state icon will also change copy state of its children, grab the top level assembly and all the sub-components can be set to copy in one click - likewise you can move down the tree removing selected branches by CTRL selecting the copy icon to remove them from the copy operation.  

These two simple little tips can save big time in the context of copy design and that's kinda the whole point.

-Allan

Faster Server Faster! (64 Bit Server)

One of the great Autodesk Vault 2013 performance improvements is the addition of ADMS 64-bit support.

This change means that ADMS has access to more memory during task execution when installed on 64-bit operating systems, making server based activity just that bit faster.

Perhaps more importantly than this though is memory access for the SQL installation which does a great deal of the heavy lifting when it comes to performing server maintenance and client side requests.  Vault has always been able to utilize 64-bit installations of SQL but do you know whether you have SQL 32 or 64 bit versions installed?  By default the Autodesk Vault media is distributed with and installs the 32-bit version of SQL Express meaning if so desired you need to download from Microsoft the 64-bit version of the installation media.  (This is largely due to logistics of supplying so much data and the fact so many users are still dependent on 32 bit servers).

Check here on how to find out what version of SQL you are running and the Wiki instructions on how to pre-install your 64-bit server with SQL 64-bit here, depending on what SQL media you have there is an options section on the setup screen which will allow you to check 32 or 64 bit installs.

- Allan

Photo: Eric Kilby

Autodesk and Mosaic (Another place to read this blog)

I often hear confusion from folks about how best to consume the large amounts of incredibly useful information coming out of Autodesk and of course in particular from us here in the DM team.

There are a number of blogs you can subscribe to (like this one for example, we also have a support blog here and a developer blog here), discussion groups, Facebook, Youtube and support pages.  

You probably have a number of these bookmarked and remember to go and look at them occasionally, or as you need to (and yes, from home in the case of Facebook), but wouldn't it be nice if there was one place that aggregated all this content?  Wouldn't it be even better if you could mix in the other Autodesk products you were interested in?

Well great news, the Mosaic site is for you!  If you haven't already been up to take a look, Mosaic is dedicated to bringing all the product social streams together in one central location.

Latest posts from all of our blogs (you can go there right now and read this blog post - go on!), YouTube Channel, Facebook page etc are available on the Vault page or you can build your own custom page from the available information streams for a simple succinct feed featuring only the details you care about.

- Allan

Apps for this and apps for that (Vault on the Autodesk Apps Exchange)

If you have not been up there to take a look yet now might very well be the time or perhaps at least the time to go back and have another look at what we have been up to.

After launching on the Autodesk Exchange App site 6 months ago the Vault store has grown to 15 apps ranging simple from workspace management tools, productivity solutions around project creation, property management and item copy right up to sophisticated job processor and data loading tools from a range of different partners addressing a range of end user pain points.  

Apps too, vary from free, to low cost and trial versions enabling you to quickly and easy get up and running with a new piece of functionality or connect with a developer who can solve specific issues for your environment and implementation.

All files please, no wait, not that one. (Property Indexing)

OK, I realise for some of you Property Re-Indexing is a total mystery, for others a partial mystery, why do you need to do it? When should you do it? What is it doing?  Why is it taking so long?  If you are one of these folks I would skip straight to the bottom and follow the link to our WikiHelp to better understand what property indexing does for you and whether or not you need to do it, at least right now.

Having said all that, it is likely that at one time or another you have been required to re-index properties or will have to in the future after iFilter updates and the like, so with this in mind we have made some important improvements to Property Re-Indexing in Vault 2013 which reduces the size of this task and in turn the time taken to carry out a Property Re-Index.  

You might remember a short time ago we introduced the ability to index latest only versions of files, this was a great start but we decided we could do more, so in 2013 we now have the ability to filter out certain files based on the extension, provider and date range.  This means if you have a fairly good idea of which files do not need updating with the re-index or are only interested in a certain number of files we can drastically reduce the files included in the re-index.

This effort to simplify re-indexing is further reinforced by the new User Defined Property (UDP) mapping, which removes the requirement for users to index files that are not affected by UDP updates.

Read more about property indexing and these new improvements on our wiki here

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!