Under The Hood

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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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  Driving Custom Types with Custom Properties
  October 30, 2007 03:29 PMby Brian Roepke

  One of the most powerful features in Productstream is the ability to assign an item “type”. A type allows you to set a flag on an item that helps control its intent for use, and in turn the properties that are associated to it. Let me quick cover a few reasons you might employ an Item Type before we get into the guts of how it’s used.
  
  First off, an item type by default is something like “Part”, “Assembly” or “Purchased”. These are great default types and they correspond to the associated file types in Inventor and also the BOM levels in AutoCAD Mechanical. But why would you want certain properties in some cases vs. another? Let’s take an example of the most common from a cad perspective; material. Material is something such as “Steel” or “Plastic” and represents the physical characteristics of it. In the case of Material this only relates to a Part and not an Assembly; Assemblies aren’t made of a material, they’re made of the material that the parts are made of.
  
  There are other cases that are common as well which might lead you to create custom types. Let’s say for example Electrical components or Pneumatic components. These have specific properties like “Maximum Operating Pressure” for Pneumatics and “Voltage” for Electrical. With each case you can see that these properties are very important, but only to the actual types you’re interested in.
  
  Let’s look at an easy way that you can reasonably automate this each time a new file is assigned an item.
  
  1) First off you need to tell the Inventor files the type that it belongs to. This can be done by creating a custom property that will represent the part’s type. In this example I’ve created one called “Type” and set its value to “Pneumatic”.
  
  
  
  2) After this file is added to the vault or checked back in we can start to set up Productstream. In the administration tools start by creating some properties that are required for your particular type. In this case we’ll create a couple of properties that are for the “Pneumatic” type; “Tubing Size” and “Pressure”. In this example it’s important that we set the value of “Display on Item” to “no”; this will ensure that no all types get these properties.
  
  
  
  3) Next we need to set up the custom Item Type. Create one with the EXACT same name as you put in your custom properties. The spelling needs to be exact for Productstream to understand the match. Create a new type called “Pneumatic”
  
  
  
  4) In order to ensure that these properties show up on this new type we need to select “Edit Policies…” for this item type and change the “Display on Item” value for “Tubing Size” and “Pressure” to “yes”. This will ensure that only the properties related to that type are displayed.
  
  
  
  5) Finally we need to set up a simple mapping to teach Productstream to honor this value. Simply mapping this new “Type” custom property to the Productstream Item Type is all you need to do to finalize this.
  
  
  
  6) The end result is shown below. Not only is the Item Type set as soon as the item is “assigned” to the part, it also shows the correct properties which allows you to either fill them out manually or automatically populate them from the file’s properties.
  
  
  
  Why would you do all this? Searching of course! The more data that is available for searching the better you can find and reuse it. Just think about this in the context of doing a project. Just think if you could get an accurate list of every Pneumatic component that fit a particular tubing size? What about that Electrical component and your voltage requirements. Selecting from your existing inventory is always a better practice and Productstream can help you get your job done faster and with less errors!
  
  

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  DM Usability Survey
  October 28, 2007 09:05 AMby Brian Roepke

  Ross Tanner from the Product Deisgn Group has posted a survey on DM usability. Please take a minute to fill this out and let us know your thoughts!
  
  *****
  
  A usability study is an opportunity for Autodesk to collect direct user
  feedback about future features. Autodesk performs usability studies in a
  variety of formats that range from simple phone interviews to video
  recordings of users performing test drives. If you are interested and would
  like to participate please complete the survey linked below. Selection for
  participation in a study is based on a comparison of the feature that is
  under study and your profile in the survey. Thanks for your consideration
  and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
  
  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=APeWavBmrtJVTdluOru81g_3d_3d
  
  
  Autodesk Data Management Usability Group
  
  
  
  

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  Mass Update of Item Properties
  October 5, 2007 09:31 AMby Brian Roepke

  A user on the discussion group, Joeri Tuyn, has a GREAT tip on how to edit items. I thought I'd share this with you in case you didn't see the post.
  
  Also - if you don't frequent the discussion groups - Please do! They're a great source of information and help.
  
  Vault: http://www.autodesk.com/discussiongroup-vault
  Productstream: http://www.autodesk.com/discussiongroup-productstream
  
  Here is Joeri's tip:
  
  I'm not sure how many people encountered this, but sure we did. Editing items in productstream can be pretty time consuming, especially when your busy implementing. What we encountered often are compliancy issues end just plain wrong data. Editing is a terrible job; setting compliances right, filling in missing data that is the same in many occasions (in particular for drop down list), etc. So what's the trick?
  
  1. Export (not 'export items') to excel. Make sure you have all columns visible in your view, because only visible columns are exported.
  2. Edit what you want to edit in excel. Use formula's, filtering and whatever you like in excel.
  3. Save as Unicode text (very important, normal TAB delimited may fail in many occasions)
  4. Import items in productstream and select the text file you just created (make sure excel doesn't have the file open).
  5. Map all properties
  6. Import
  7. You get a preview with an overview of the items you're trying to import. Any conflicts are shown in the list and can be set manually.
  8. Make import final or cancel at this stage.
  
  A few notes:
  - Only items that are WIP of Review can be changed. Therefore these items are ignored if you try to import them.
  - ALL properties are overwritten, so make sure you have all properties filled in.
  - Some fields can't be changed such as: Last updated by, Last updated. But everything else can.
  - New items will be created
  - You can change state from WIP or Review to something else (Released?)
  - It does not affect attached files
  
  This method can end up saving you a ton of time; changing items is a matter of minutes now instead of hours....
  
  

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  How to Find Out What Needs to be Updated
  October 1, 2007 08:55 PMby Brian Roepke

  A post on the newsgroup today asked a really good question which uncovered an answer that many of you might not know exists. I thought I’d share this one with you to broaden your data management horizons.
  
  Inside of Vault and Productstream there is something know as “Track File Status”. This option allows you to be alerted through a visual icon any time a file has children that need to be updated or re-synced to the latest version. This can happen in many different scenarios but the most common is this: Say for example you have a single Inventor Drawing and it is detailing a single Inventor Part. Let’s say at some point in the week you open up JUST the part and add a single hole to it. Come Friday how do you know that you added the missing dimensions on the drawing? How do you know the drawing is up to date?
  
  Well… we all would like to hope, think and wish our drawings did themselves but the truth is they don’t… and I can’t solve that! However this little tip will give you an indication ANY time your file isn’t pointing to the latest one that’s available.
  
  To turn this on, just follow these steps:
  
  1. Open up Vault Explorer or Productstream and select Tools > Administration and check the box for “Track File Status”
  
  
  
  2. Next we need to “re- teach” the Vault what the current file status is for each and every file in the Vault. This is a pretty simple opersation and takes just a few moment. Simply Open the ADMS Console and select the “Update File Status” command for the vault you’re working with.
  
  
  
  3. Next we need to add the visual indicator that shows you what is up to our out of date. In the Vault Explorer or Productstream add the “File Status” Column – this will add a small icon to the grid (move it toward the top of the list.
  
  
  
  4. And finally any file that has references that are newer than what it’s linked to will show this icon… clicking on it (with the control key pressed) will tell you why!
  
  
  
  As a nice bonus tip. Try creating a saved search for any file that “needs updating” for the “File Stauts” property. You can get a free view that always shows you a list of what needs updating!
  
  
  

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