Under the Hood

Vault 2017 and the App Store

Some of you more observant types have probably already noticed that the Vault 2017 Apps hit the store last week, including one new app and a host of add-ins that rarely see daylight this time of year.

Looking first at our old favorites, Vault Mirror, Drawing Compare and Project Thunderdome, these have all had a fresh coat of paint and updated to work in 2017, ready to go when you upgrade.

As mentioned last post we also added a new extension this year for Vault 2017 - "Place from Vault" that allows users to select a file from the Vault Explorer and insert directly into the current active Inventor assembly.  This subscription entitlement addresses a long standing user request and is already gaining popularity with those on 2017.

This year also represents the earliest we have been able to deliver our subscription only third party add-ins with the Vault Professional add-ins for Pro/ENGINEER & Creo, Solidworks and Microstation all now available on the store.

Each add-in, while offering extended support for newer 3rd party CAD application versions, has had a number of customer driven enhancements focused primarily on performance, stability and view-able creation, meaning they are not only early than, but notably improved over previous versions.

The Appstore now boasts more extended Vault capabilities than ever before, so if you haven't already stopped by to see whats new, click here to access, browse around and start your downloading.

- Allan

Vault ECO - How do I enforce this stuff?

There has been a number of subtle changes to ECO object behaviors of late, with the extension of flexible lifecycle definitions to items and addition of ECO record support to files we have seen necessary changes to the close ECO behavior as detailed in my last post, but also the addition of new properties and settings to control ECO workflow and manage lifecycle transitions.

First off we should take a look at the primary method for how we now enforce change order control over objects.  Typically once a change process is defined via ECO, administrators will want to ensure user adoption of the process, requiring any lifecycle transition to be approved via an ECO.  To enable this, from the tools and Vault administrator settings you are able to select the Change Order tab and configure "Restrict File and Item Lifecycle state changes to Change Orders".

From the dialog above we can see that the options to tie lifecycle state changes for either or both items and files to an ECO, providing a blanket requirement that all files and items states be controlled through an ECO and meaning that an ECO is required not only for change management, but initial file release.  This is a great way to ensure noone is accidentally releasing or "sneaking" designs into production without additional approval and we can capture the approval process for new designs as well as your change requests.

Depending on your teams needs it is of course possible to provide different routing's for initial release vs design changes (with different approver's etc) and if desired we can also permit the administrator to override the ECO control and change object states, something you may consider for special cases. 

So what does it look like when a user tries to change file states now without an ECO?  You will see here our user gets a descriptive error message indicating they require change order control for state changes:

Of course your administrator can be made an exception here and will not see this error, but otherwise the user has little choice but to assign the file or item to a change order and follow the prescribed approval process.

Once in the ECO we have additional means by which to control state changes which is worthy of a longer examination in my next post, where we explore how to limit or enforce state changes throughout the ECO process.

- Allan

Vault Day 2015: We're back!

 

Vault Day is back, and this time we have double the content, spread out across 2 different days. For our customers, we invite you to expand and deepen your Vault knowledge and skills. This is your chance to take courses you may have missed at Autodesk University. The day is packed with webinars designed to help you master design data management and learn advanced tips and tricks to become one with your data.

This Vault Day takes place on December 17th, all online. Here's a peek at the classes you can sign up for:

That's what we have available for our valued current users. We also have a day geared towards those who are looking for information on how a data management solution can help build a more efficient design-development cycle.

These online classes are taking place a couple of days earlier, on December 15th. You may even find that there are a couple of these sessions you'd like to attend. You're more than welcome to register for any of the classes available over the 2 days. Here's a quick look at the classes available on the 15th:

You can register for one or both days of sessions here. We hope to "see" all of you there!

- Kimberly Stout, Community Manager Vault & PLM 360

 

The Basics of Vault Copy Design in 68 Seconds

Since 2015 R2, Copy Design has received a face lift and some really great enhancements.  Are you too busy to watch a comprehensive overview? Below is a quick and painless video that walks you through the basics. For more in-depth tutorials on Copy Design, check out some of our past blog posts.

 

 

- Tyler Beck, Technical Marketing (Vault & PLM 360)

Autodesk Vault - More 3rd Party Add-in News

Hi again Vault enthusiasts,

Hot on the heels of the Autodesk Vault Professional add-in for SolidWorks and Autodesk Vault Professional add-in for Microstation I am pleased to share news that the Autodesk Vault Professional 2016 Add-In for Pro/ENGINEER & Creo is now available on the appstore and Autodesk Account (subscription center) for Subscription only customers.

Once again we have been gradually enhancing product performance as well as adding additional support for Creo 3 in this release.allowing users to manage their legacy Creo data along side their Autodesk design tools and other project data even if using the latest versions of Creo.

Please see readme documentation for further detail on supported applications and system requirements, noting too we have launched online help documentation for the add-in here in an effort to improve user access and visibility. 

- Allan

Vault Copy Design, to Infinity and Beyond!

Support for circular references is a feature that impacts and of course must be implemented across all facets of Vault, but was primarily driven by our desire to have an accurate copy design output.

If you are not sure where you may find a circular reference, these are a natural bi-product of creating simplified models in Inventor, creating complex skeletal models or by simply referencing files in certain ways in AutoCAD.   

Circular references can be confusing and, as you can well imagine, create problems with our Vault operations by creating an infinite loop (ties it back to title of the post) for us to work through when uploading or downloading references.  In the past we simply cut the loop short and didn't display this in Vault, we now though capture and display the circular reference.

What does this mean?  From a copy design perspective 2 things:

1. You can see these references and configure to get correct outcomes with your simplified assemblies for instance
2. You can expand your reference tree for hours and hours without ever getting to the end!

Please do not take number 2 as a challenge - eventually you will run out of screen real estate, time out the operation or go cross eyed - by design we limit how far down we automatically expand circular references, but you can keep manually expanding the uses tree if that seems like a good time.

For those of you looking for another kind of Copy Design related good time, please check out our next Vault Talk session focused on Vault Copy Design next month.

Please join us for this session at 12:30pm EST on Thursday the 8th of October 2015.

In this webinar, we will cover Autodesk Vault classes and activities at Autodesk University 2015, along with a close look at Copy Design. 

Register for the session here.

See you then (Virtually)

-Allan

Vault Copy Design, Rules for Action! What Are They Now?

Another big request we have heard from users and have implemented in the new Copy Design is the ability to update properties for our new files.  

We have for a while now been able to update the part number value as part of copy design, but what about all those other fields like stock number, description, author that can all retain incorrect details?  Vault Workgroup and Professional 2016 offers the ability to reset or remove some of these values and in a few select cases map a new value into these fields.

Our intent is, over time, to expand the flexibility of property editing as part of copy design, but for now we are focused on providing a file which is assigned the right category, state and revision without incorrect information from the source file.  You will likely though still need to update some properties after copy if you are changing descriptions or adding new custom  property values.

Lets start off by looking at how we access and create rules, in the next post we will look at the specific rule conditions available for use.

From the file menu in Copy Design select the Action Rules, you will see here a list of available rule sets - as we have seen in earlier examples only one action rule can be applied per operation though the sets can contain multiple rules to permit different behaviors based on file properties.  In any case, this is the place where we define the available rule sets for user selection.

Note that rule set definition is available only to administrators and specific to the machine they are set up on, once configured you need to deploy these rule sets to clients using Project Thunderdome or some other system tools.

To create a new rule, we can copy one of these existing rules or start a new one from scratch.  Note we have supplied a default rule here which cannot be deleted or edited.  This default rule mimics the legacy copy design behavior, so if you do not require additional capabilities default will do the job, simply updating the part number, resetting the category to that of a new file and removing iLogic.

In the video below we will copy this default rule set and create a new one.  Once we open this up we will see an interface similar to the file category assignment rules.  

 

At the top is a list of rules which make up the rule set.  These rules have a single condition or multiple conditions that need to be met before we apply the settings - this could be file type (like a part file in this case) or category type for example and the rules are checked top to bottom, this means that the order is important as soon as one rule condition is met for a file Copy Design stops checking.....

Once the rule conditions are set we can then add the actions associated with the rule, what properties should be modified and whether the change should be to Reset, Set Blank or Set Value As (map a property).  Here lets just clear he description and select OK.

We will go more in depth on rule creation next blog.

With our new rule set created we can select OK and leave the Action Rules Dialog, returning to the main Copy Design UI we are now able to access the new rule set from the Selected Rule Set pull down menu.

Select the new rule set and run the copy - our new files are created with updated properties including a blank description value.  

-Allan

Vault Copy Design, Replacing Files (The Future Is Now)

The new version of Vault Copy Design (as you would imagine) still enables users to carry out a replace file as part of your copy operation, providing a simple way to swap out one common component for another or set up a new configuration based on existing design data.  What happens though when you haven't actually finished creating the part or files you want to use in that replace action?

Well, you might say, you're crazy and there is no need to do that.  Bare with me though.

What if for example you have have several variations on a common component (left / right handed or varying finish) that you want to copy and consolidate back to a single design iteration in one action?

What about the scenario we looked at in the "Select References" post where we want to copy some component references and reuse others without creating a whole bunch of new files? 

Well, using pending file replace, these workflows are now supported.  

In the video below we will first off switch to select references mode and do a simple, traditional file replace, just select the existing file and replace allows us to search for a potential replacement which is inserted.  The change of component automatically sets the model tree to copy.

We now select to copy one reference of the Combo Spacer, as expected we have one new copy of this and 1 reference being reused.  I repeat for the notched spacer, 1 of those now being copied and 1 reused.

Copy the other reference to the Combo Spacer and this is where it gets interesting, I am creating two new files, but using this numbering scheme I will have 2 new files with the same name in the same folder - this will cause the copy to fail.....

We can of course just rename one of these, but if you actually want to use just 1 part in both places we can actually "Replace" the second reference with the pending file.  Simply select to replace the second Combo Spacer reference and in the file dialog select "Pending Data".  Here we see all the new files that are about to be created as part of the copy design command - BAM! 

Picking the new instance of Combo Spacer you will see the count for Combo spacer changes to 2 and I am actually creating a single new file with 2 references.

 

What say I no longer need the notched spacer in the main assembly and intend to replace with this new Combo Spacer design?  Right click on the reference I am interested in and I can again replace and select the new Combo Spacer from Pending data.

I now have 3 references to this new part which is yet to be created.

We can continue on here replacing a number of components with new files and once the copy is executed, we can open the file and our newly copied part will be referenced in all the desired locations. As with all replace actions, we may have some constraining / repositioning to do as part of the new design, but I now have the right references to start with.

So there we have it, no more waiting around - the "future" copies are yours to use right now!

- Allan

Vault Copy Design, A View Into The World Of Drawings

Before releasing the new Copy Design, we gathered a little feedback from Inventor users and arrived at the conclusion that most of these Copy Design users are primarily worried about the 3D model and a little less concerned when it comes to the design documentation configuration.

Don't get us wrong, we know one of the main benefits to copying an existing design is providing a completely new model with documentation ready to go pending your design tweaks, which is why we provide a new simplified view of the copy design that is going to, by default, copy and rename your drawings to match the models.  

We called this the Model View.

For those of you though who are a little more curious about the fate of your design documentation, we allow you to switch this default Model View to "Drawing View", enabling users to see all the attached drawings as top level objects in Copy Design, along with their current actions and new file names.

If you have the default settings configured, the drawings will be set to "Link Drawings to Models", meaning when we switch to Drawing View (as in the video below) all your drawing files will be set to "Automatic".  What does this mean though?

Automatic means the design documentation (dwg, idw and ipn files) will take the same name as the primary model dependency (the first model detailed in the drawing or presentation file and being copied) and will be copied to the same location as the primary model dependency, if this is what you want, you can probably switch back to model view right now, but if you like the more cluttered main grid view or want to change either the drawing file name or the drawing file location this is where you do it.

As you see in the video, by changing the drawing file to "Copy" (Or selecting "Copy To"), we can set a new file location and a new file name independent of the model.  Change your mind?  Not a problem, while the link model and drawing option is selected we can Reuse the design documentation and it will revert to Auto.  In the video you can see the file names and location change accordingly.

 

Now when you disable the link between model and drawings you will see the drawings revert to Edit status and you will essentially be linking a new model to this drawing - be careful - this is why we made Edit "Red", it's not usually what you want to do.

You may also wonder here what the difference between Automatically Copy Parents and Link Drawings and Model is.  If you disable link drawing and model, but maintain the automatically copy parents option your drawings will automatically be set to copy with the models, but of course have separate file names and locations, meaning it's quite different to Auto but a good way to ensure you don't accidentally edit drawings.

If you decide you don't want or need drawings for the copied models you can set the file to Exclude (see my post on Exclude for more details there) and it will simply be ignored, you'll get a model with no drawing.  

In the video example I set everything back to Auto to ensure the file names and save locations are consistent and I can then execute to create the new models with their associates ipn and idw files.  Obviously given this result, the simpler approach is to just stay in model view and have the all this happen in the background, but life isn't always that simple and drawing view gives us full access to all files and complete flexibility to set our drawing details when the need arises.

- Allan 

Vault Copy Design, Show Me Your References!

This is one of those, "I did not know I couldn't do that" posts: well for some of you anyways.

When it came to copying components in the old version of Copy Design, if you wanted to copy a single part or file you had to copy every reference to that part or file, meaning if you had hardware used in 3 or 4 places in your assembly, you had no choice but to copy or replace every instance used everywhere.

I show an example of this in the video below, using the default component selection mode I click to copy a file and we see all references of the file are set to copy, changing to "Reference Select" mode in 2016 though, we can now start to select individual component references to copy or replace.  

Its important here though we start to leverage some useful properties to understand what's going on.  In the video you will see I have a modified version of the Padlock assembly loaded which contains multiple references to a number of parts (the parts are differentiated here by being in at different levels of the model structure).  Next to these files we have the "ID" and "Count" fields enabled.  These two numeric values are used to distinguish which reference to that part we are working on (ID) and how many references to the file there are (Count).

In normal selection mode I copy 1 reference and both are set to copy, you will see that both of the files references get new ID's because we are creating new files and we still want to differentiate references, but you will see the count remains at "2" because we are creating one new file with 2 references.

Make sense?

 

Now I switch to Reference select, and choose to reuse one of these references - the count on both is now "1", that is, we have 1 reference to the original component, 1 reference to the new copied component.

Easy huh?!  I can now opt to only copy or replace the 1 reference I want.

There is one more twist though, look what happens though when I select to copy that second reference again - it is now set to copy, but its reference count is still "1".

What this means is I am now building 2 new components, not 1.  The new assembly will feature 2 separate components that were formally one file.  You need to keep an eye on this if it is not your intention and we will dive a little deeper into how to resolve this situation in the "Replace" topic.

Switching across to our panels we can see now the source file with 2 different destination files.  Using the ID property and cross highlighting we can also identify which is which and specify differing numbering schemes or locations.

This addition means we now have greatly enhanced flexibility with copying components, and much better control over our references, deciding what truly needs to be copied or reused and where previously we would need to open the file and restore references after the copy, it can now all be done directly in the Copy Design tool.

Happy Reference Copying!

- Allan