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Brian Schanen joined Autodesk in 2005 as a Product Designer and currently is a Customer Success Engineer for Autodesk’s Data Management products. Brian has taught at Autodesk University numerous times and has authored white papers on Vault and Productstream. He works with customers to implement a complete digital prototyping solution specializing in Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Vault and Productstream. Brian lives near Detroit, Michigan.
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India MSD Channel Summit
March 30, 2006 04:50 PMby Grant RochelleWell, it's been a day or two since I last checked in due to lack of internet connection and the next hectic stage of our travel schedule. We left India yesterday after a very successful Channel Summit meeting attended by over 70 people representing almost 40 resellers and our own colleagues from Autodesk India. We had a very productive day with our partners, and from my own perspective it was fabulous to see so much enthusiasm around data management. Here's yours truly waving his arms around during my pitch:
These guys are ready to take the Autodesk DM story to our customers, and as I saw from my customer visits we will be solving the same classic problems that we see all over the world when manufacturers are trying to manage engineering data in the Windows file system.
I spent quite a bit of time chatting with the partners about how powerful the Bill of Materials capabilities are within Productstream, so I thought it timely to launch a BOM Pop Quiz:
1. You skin your knuckles creating a bloody brilliant looking parts list on your assembly drawing, but did you know that further downstream someone somewhere might be re-ntering all that great data all over again into your company ERP/MRP system (and mucking it up)?
First off, Productstream's BOM capability allows you to capture your mechanical structures from Inventor or AutoCAD Mechanical automatically and complete the process by adding non-drawn items etc. Then your colleage in production engineering can take all that data and simply export it out in the file format of their choice for easy import into other systems. No need to break a sweat, no way to make a mistake.
2. Your boss stops by to ask you "can you show me the BOM for the configuration we shipped to Acme Corp. on March 30th 2003? They've got a problem with the machine and no one can tell me exactly what we sent". How long will it take you to get that information together?
Fear no more, because with the BOM Views in Productstream 5 that level of information is at your fingertips for the first time. BOM Views help you inspect BOM information:
- by a specific date
- by current effective state or
- by the default "today" view
Now that's intelligent! Oh, and I promised I would try to capture some of the street life before we left Bangalore, and although I didn't get much on camera I thought you'd like to see one of the many forms of transport on offer for the adventurous:
That's it for now, look out for my next entry from Seoul, Korea.
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Watermarking
March 30, 2006 09:55 AMby Grant RochelleFor many of you, the way work gets done on the shop floor is still with paper prints. If however you've been thinking about how you could go "paperless" at some point, you'll want to know about Productstream's ability to place a watermark on all DWF's that clearly indicates the current lifecycle of a particular item.
Why is this important? Anyone using a Productstream client can see data that's in the Vault. Adding watermarks to the 2D DWF files ensures that there is absolutely no ambiguity about the lifecycle state of that particular part or assembly - it can literally be stamped in BIG RED LETTERS across the drawing.
As an administrator you get to control not just the text that makes up the watermark, but also the font, font size, font color and location on the drawing.
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Globe trotting
March 30, 2006 09:43 AMby Grant RochelleSomeone once sang "I'm a'leavin' on a jet plane" - I never did like that song but I'll definitely be leaving this weekend on a round the world trip as part of our global launch activities! This should be a fantastic trip, taking in both India and Korea and I'll have the opportunity to meet with both customers and resellers in each of those countries. I'm taking my camera too, so that I can share some of the experience (good, bad, ugly) with you all.
Wish me luck!
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Invisible data management?
March 28, 2006 01:53 PMby Grant RochelleWhether you're learning a new application for the first time, or you class yourself as a power user you sometimes want to to set things up the way you like to work day in, day out. There are new options in both Vault and Productstream 5 that enable you to maximize or minimize the amount of button picking and dialogs you interact with for all the bread and butter stuff. For example:
- Check in
- Check out
- Undo check out
- Get lastest version
Using the Options in your Tools menu you can now set things up to suppress each dialog and do other cool things like "delete working copy" automatically when you check in (for instance). So, now you really can make data management as invisible, or as visible as you like!
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Help - more than a new look
March 27, 2006 08:38 AMby Grant RochelleThe Help system in Vault and Productstream 5 goes way beyond just a new look. If you're planning on upgrading I highly recommend you take the time to check it out. We had a lot of feedback last year that the right kind of help was difficult to find at those times when you needed it the most. We also heard that it felt a bit out of place, almost like a separate application.
To fix this and ensure that you always get the right help at the right time, we completely redesigned the help system so that it:
- looks and feels like part of Vault or Productstream
- can be seen as an embedded window or a "tear off" panel. You decide which topics are relevant and hide those you don't want to see
- supports Topics on Demand. This is absolutely awesome, and to see it for yourself just watch the content change dynamically in the Topics on Demand area of the help as you click on Change Order List or Item Master in the user interface. If you select one of the embedded links you're automatically switched into Help Contents so that you can get all the details
There are tons of other new things we've done to help improve your day to day experience, but if you're going to jump in right now with 5 this is definately the place to get started!
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Autoloader rocks!
March 22, 2006 04:36 PMby Grant RochelleIf you've had time to check out the What's New Guide, you will by now be beside yourselves over the prospect of getting your grubby little mitts on a tool like Autoloader. Imagine not having to figure out for yourself where you've got duplicate files, missing references or even better getting all your file permissions cleaned up from past usage of semi isolated mode!
Well, hold on to your hats because it just got even better. I found out that the performance of Autoloader has been boosted to do all those complex, nasty little analysis jobs with absoluely blistering speed. Our lads in the lab and in the field have been hammering on Autoloader with real customer datasets, and they just reported that for a 10,000 file Inventor assembly the analysis phase completed in less than ONE HOUR! Blimey, that's less time than it takes me to eat a pint and a pasty!
Just to get a complete picture though, here are some more really impressive numbers:
10,000 files - just 2 hours to scan, copy, validate and upload to Vault
25,000 files - just over 5 hours to scan, copy, validate and upload to Vault
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A Really Big Number
March 17, 2006 11:59 AMby Grant RochelleWell, OTC is over and I've left Vegas far behind. It was an amazing event, and just incredible to see all of Autodesk's world wide channel partners, sales, technical and divisional folks all together in one spot. For a relative newbie like me, it suddenly made sense why we were able to deliver $1.523B last year - we have the best team in the world! So it was even more encouraging to come back and see that Daratech has raised it's projections for our marketplace (usually called Product Lifecycle Management or "PLM"). And judging by the rapid uptake of Vault by all of you, data management is going to play a MASSIVE part in that growth for Autodesk.
What do I mean? Well, I'll share some really big numbers with you and you can judge for yourself:
17,000 - the number of sites that registered Vault last year
36,000 - the minimum number of Autodesk CAD seats using Vault
241,000,000 - the number of files being managed by Vault world wide
OK, OK. How did I get these numbers? From you! Since you register Vault when you install and provide us with information about how you plan to use it, we're able to get our hands on real world data.
241 million? Now that's a really big number...
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Vault 5 What's New!
March 14, 2006 06:00 AMby Grant RochelleComing to Vegas has changed my luck! I have just been given the nod that we can share all the details about what's new and fabulous in Vault and Productstream 5. I thought we could get started with Vault, so take a look at the Vault 5 What's New Guide. Make sure you take the time to read up on brilliant new time savers like Autoloader and Full Content Search. If you've got new users you'll also want to make use of the new look Dynamic Help and Seamless Vault options, both of which make it even easier for people to get up and running with data management. And if you were wondering if Vault 5 will give you the opportunity to finally put Design Assistant into mothballs, you are going to LOVE the new File Property Editing and Global File Replace wizards that we've built into this release.
Go and grab a cuppa, put yer feet up and take the time to read and digest. If you've got any questions, just let me know!
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Vegas Baby!
March 13, 2006 07:33 PMby Grant RochelleWOW. Only my second visit to Las Vegas and I can't get over it. I walked to breakfast at 6.50am this morning through the casino floor of the MGM, and observed an interesting sight. A gentleman was semi-slumped over some type of glass top table machine, completely alone, watching little plastic horses race around a track. Eyes glazed, he seemed mesmerized by the prospect of winning something, or quite possibly he had passed away sometime earlier in the morning and the cleaners just hadn't got around to taking him away yet!
Anyway, in true Vegas style I completely ignored him and went to fill my face with tasty eggs and such. So, as you can probably tell by now I am not a gambler - so why on earth am I in Vegas? One Team Conference 2006, the annual sales kick off event for all Autodesk sales and technical people and our incredible world wide channel partners. Quite a do I can tell you, but today is only the first day so I'll fill you in on more details later.
One quick thing before I dash off though, did you all catch the news that our new supplier content portal has been launched? You have to check this out!
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Connecting with Your Suppliers
March 9, 2006 01:25 AMby Grant RochelleHow difficult is it to keep your suppliers up to date? We talk to a lot of Autodesk customers who use email to send DWF files to key suppliers (sometimes customers too) who they need to work with on particular parts of a design project. Although using email is faster than sending paper prints or files on a CD/DVD, they still run into problems because the supplier can get out of sync very quickly with changes that are still happening inside the design team. You're probably familiar with the scenario: You sent them version D, they start to design a tooling fixture off that version but you kept changing the design and forgot to email them an update for a week because you're so flipping busy. Next thing you know, they send you a virtual prototype back and it doesn't match your expectations and you're running around the office muttering "Bugger!".
Well, there is a better way. Many of you have probably heard of Buzzsaw, Autodesk's online project management tool for building and construction. There is a flavor of Buzzsaw called Streamline that is designed for manufacturers rather than architects and builders, and it works hand in hand with Vault and Productstream to make sure your suppliers are always working from the latest version of your designs. You give your supplier a Streamline account, connect it to your Vault implementation and each time you check in a new version of a part/assembly the DWF will automatically be published to the Streamline site. Your supplier will get an email notification and they can download the latest version. To ensure your supplier is doing their part, you can check if and when they downloaded, if you're expecting them to upload work when they're done you can see all that information too. Streamline provides online discussion boards and much more. In just 6 steps you can make Vault/Productstream work seamlessly with Streamline -- want to see how?
Tip: Connecting Vault and Productstream with Streamline
1. Select "Site Information" from the pull-down menu just above the main viewing window
2. Download and install iPublisher using the URL link in "Software Resources"
3. Once installed, you should see iPublisher in the "Other" category of My Computer. Double click on it to open
4. Double-click "Add Connection"
5. When the Add Connection Wizard appears, enter your Streamline username and password. You can get the "Location URL" by right clicking on the project folder in Streamline that you want to use. Select "Copy URL" and paste it into the Location URL field
6. Add a connection name and specify the folder that you want to have "watched". This will be the same folder that you have already defined as the DWF publish folder for your Vault or Productstream implementation
You're done! Click here if you want to find out more on Streamline.