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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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Simplify the Item Master with Custom Views and Filters
May 23, 2007 04:08 PMbyProductstreams Item Master displays a list of all Items in the system, in one view by default. There are several ways to sort and order the Items by Number, Lifecycle State, Title, etc. In the image below, the All Items filter is active, showing the entire Item Master. The following steps outline the use of filters and custom views to focus on specific Items.
There are several custom views that are available out-of-the-box. In addition, you can define a custom view called WIP Items only for example using a custom filter Lifecycle State is Work In Progress.
Or you can use a Filter on-the-fly in your current view by using the icon that appears when placing your cursor on the top right corner of a column header.
Select from the list of values for that Filter. In this example, the Lifecycle States that are used are available in the list.
The Result in your default All Items view you are able to quickly filter your list of Items to view WIP Items only.
You can also combine multiple Filters. In this example we want to display all WIP Items that have a Revision value of A.
To clear the Filter(s) you can use the following options:
to permanently clear the entire Filter
to toggle the use of the entire Filter
to clear the specified column Filter
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Part 2 of 2: Merging and Consolidating Duplicate Items During Assign Item
May 17, 2007 08:00 AMby Brian RoepkeAs we discussed in Part 1; when working with Items in Productstream, it is possible to have components in a design that may actually be duplicate information to an already existing Item. Because of this, when an Item is assigned, Productstream provides a method for resolving possible duplicate items.
When using Autodesk Inventor, Productstream will use the information extracted from the Part Number property to identify duplicate information. During the Assign Items process, the Find Duplicates dialog will show the duplicates and allow you choose the Item that the CAD data should be assigned to. It the Auto-select first duplicate option is selected; Productstream will select the first Item that is deemed as the duplicate.
This process is the default behavior with Autodesk Inventor due to the Part Number property being designated as the Equivalence property. This allows Productstream to compare Part Number information in the search for duplicate data.
When using AutoCAD Mechanical there is no default property assigned as the Equivalence property, due to the flexible nature of the AutoCAD Mechanical BOM.
To assit with this issue Productstream will use a BOM Column named PSEQUIVALENCE if it is found in the drawings BOM.
To Create the BOM Column in AutoCAD Mechanical:
Select the Properties button in the BOM Dialog.
Enter the name and description of the new property as PSEQUIVALENCE.
Enter a formula mapping the field to an existing property that is used to uniquely identify the components.
Uncheck the visibility option for the new BOM column.
Press the OK button to apply the changes.
Press the OK button to close the BOM dialog.
Save and Close the drawing file.
When the PSEQUIVALENCE column has been added to the BOM, Items being added from AutoCAD Mechanical which have duplicate values for this property will be recognized as duplicate data.
This will help to prevent duplicate Items being created when assigning items from AutoCAD Mechanical drawings.
0 Comment | Add CommentIn Under The Hood > AutoCAD Mechanical, Items, Productstream
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Part 1 of 2: Merging and Consolidating Duplicate Items During Assign Item
May 15, 2007 08:00 AMby Brian RoepkeDuring your design and BOM creation processes you might from time to time come across a case where the item's already exist in Productstream but they don't have the associated CAD files yet. When Productstream is running throught the "Assign Item" process normally and finds this case it will attempt to give the file a new item number, howver you of course want to make sure that you don't do this - you could end up with unwanted duplicates. Well... good news is that there is a way to merge these together. It's conceptually known as "equvilence" and helps you reconcile these into a single item. Below is a case where this can happen as well as a sample file showing you how to do this.
Productstream allows you to import Items that were exported from an ERP\MRP system such as Great Plains. You can also import items using a CSV file such as this.
Download the sample CSV file here: ERP_IMPORT
Select Item Master and then click File>Import Items.
Follow the instructions on importing the Items, mapping the properties to achieve the desired effect.
In this example the following mapping was used
CSV Number - >Item Number
CSV Description - >Item Description
CSV Revision - > Item Revision.
The Imported Items now look like this in Productstream.
However, the Items do not have any files associated with them.
Using Inventor, it possible to manually populate the PartNumber (Display Name = Part Number) iProperty. It is possible that Designers may have been obtaining the Part Numbers from the ERP\MRP system and manually populating the PartNumber iProperties. It is also possible that they may have used the Property Editing wizard in Vault Explorer to populate the properties. As shown below:
Note that some of the Part Numbers correspond directly with those imported from the ERP\MRP System.
In Vault Explorer and locate the top level assembly, Right Click the iam and select Assign Item.
This brings up the 1st page of the Assign item Wizard.
Note that the Item Numbers defined are according to the default Item Numbering Scheme; in this case the Sequential scheme is assigning default numbers to the files. Ignore this and click Next.
This takes you to the 2nd page of the Assign Item Wizard. Study the following graphic.
Notice that Auto-select first duplicates is un-ticked. Notice also the Duplicates Column. Some have a value of 0 some have a value of 1. For those Items with a value of 1, it means that the Inventor files PartNumber iProperty maps directly with an Existing Item Number.
By ticking the Auto-select first duplicate box, you sill see the following occur.
The Item Number that was going to be assigned automatically to the Inventor file has been replaced with the Item Number that corresponds directly to the PartNumber iProperty and the Inventor file will now become "linked" to the existing item!.
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Remote Backup for All!
May 10, 2007 08:00 AMby Brian RoepkeData management isn't always about Autodesk data manage tools. Over the past few days I've shared with you a few non-Autodesk tools that can help you do your job better when it comes to Autodesk Data Management; however sometimes we need to make sure our own "house" is in order as well.
In the past I searched and searched for the right way to backup my personal computer incase all hell breaks loose and I lose my computer. Needless to say, that would be VERY, VERY bad.
There are many ways to skin this cat: UBS hard disks, Burn to DVD, Tape Backup devices... None of these seem all that practical for a home user nor do they seem as safe since they are hard to maintain and they are typically not brought off-site for storage like you would at a proper corporation.
This brings me to a new web based solution, Mozy. (http://www.mozy.com)
Mozy is a 100% dedicated to the remote backup solution for both personal and professional use. They have a basic UI for doing restores of your data via the web but the meat of the solution is in their desktop sync application; this is phenomenal! They have everything you need; creating backup sets, scheduling and from what I can tell error handling. Here are some things I love about their service.
* 2GB free - Not bad if you just want to try it out or just have a little bit of data you want to back up.
* Great performance
* Great desktop sync application. Best I've seen in the business.
* Amazing differential backup capabilities. Im currently backing up 35GB at home and typical scan of all the data to determine if anything needs to be backed up only takes 5 minutes!
* Encrypted data at the client ensuring that your data is safe. You can even create a custom key if you want to get really safe (just dont ever lose that key!)
* Ability to do BIG backups Unlimited backup capacity!
* Pricing is VERY aggressive. $4.95 a month for unlimited storage! (Per computer) That is a great price.
I really hope youll give this a try. No matter what solution you chose, just make sure your data is safe; at work or at home.
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Clean Up Your Temp Directory
May 8, 2007 08:00 AMby Brian RoepkeVault and Producstream use the temp directory quite often for manipulating data; viewing, operations such as rename, copy, edit properties, etc... These files are placed in the temp directory and aren't cleaned up automatically. This can lead to a bit of disk consumption if you're not paying attention.
Here is the solution that I use. I found a simple utility from http://www.optimumx.com/ that will run through your temp directory (as set by your environment variable) and remove all files based on a set of criteria as set by command line switches. They are as follows:
Syntax: CleanUp.exe [/Y] [/O] [/A] [/P:folder] [/Q]
/Y suppresses the 'Are you sure?' prompt.
/O deletes only old files (recommended). Any files that have been created, modified or accessed on the same day will be skipped.
/A deletes all files, not just temporary files (Use caution!).
/P allows you to clean out a folder other than %TEMP%. (When used with /A the %WINDIR%, System32 and root folders are not allowed.)
/Q suppresses all output, including errors.
/? or -? displays this syntax and always returns 1.
In order to make this work you should run this on a periodic basic. You can run this either on startup or on a schedule. To do this simply create a new batch file with the following text. (Create a txt file, add the following text and rename the extension to .bat). Next simply schedule this batch file to run with the Windows Task Scheduler or put this file in your "Startup" directory.
CleanUp.exe /Y /A
CleanUp.exe /Y /A /P:"C:\Temp"
Note: The first line is for your normal temp directory and the second is for Vault 2008. In Vault 2008 the "C:\Temp" directory is used
Simple as that. You can download it here http://www.optimumx.com/download/#CleanUp
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May 5, 2007 11:49 AMby Brian RoepkeLately Ive been working with a lot of customers and helping them clean up their data. It is often the case that when it comes time to load your data in the vault you start off with a complete mess that was the result of a complete lack file management practices and people doing whatever they want
Come on Admit it youve been a little sloppy
A few things consistently come up that prevent you from loading your data quickly. There are the obvious Inventor and AutoCAD issues like broken links and corrupt files however there are also a bunch of issues not related to the CAD system that cause as many if not more headaches.
Recently (thanks to Jason, a customer I was working with) I discovered a tool called FileBoss from The Utility Factory. This tool is sort of a super Windows Explorer on steroids that allows you to manipulate, search, compare, merge, and everything else you could imaging to your files. Here are some of the things that Ive found in the tool that have helped me with data clean up.
Duplicates Easily find duplicate files and get an idea of how big your mess is to begin with. This is a SUPER smart duplicate check that can compare based on name, size, date and other parameters. Not just the name.
Compare & Merge My absolute favorite! This tool allows you to compare and merge two different folders. After you discover you have some duplicates this can be a great tool to merge them down to just a copy of the latest version. A technique that can often work to clean things up (especially with libraries)
File Sets A file set is like a saved search or a collection of things. The beauty of these is the ability to apply a filter for example you can create a file set for your engineering drive that only shows files of certain extensions (for example *.ipt | *.iam | *.idw | *.ipn | *.dwg). An amazing way to get an idea of what your Inventor or AutoCAD file count really is. After you have this file set you can also perform operations on these like compare, merge, etc
Attributes Mange all the file attributes easily (like removing re-only and archive flags)
Touching this is a bit of an advanced thing a touch allows you to go through a set of files and reset their file times (e.g. access, modified). This can be a clever tool to set a baseline of a certain time when you know files are clean.
Thats just the major ones for me. This tool does a million other things and it does it REALLY fast. I would suggest you pull down the trial and maybe even buy a copy of you like it. Its really bailed me out so far and I would think it could do the same for you!
http://www.theutilityfactory.com/
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Don
May 1, 2007 05:00 AMby Brian RoepkeWith the recent release of Autoloader 2008, no doubt many of you are going to start loading your data en-masse. Before you get too crazy and point Autoloader at your main engineering folder and say go! I thought you should know about the proper way to approach things.
Remember that most likely your data has issues, files that cant be resolved, duplicates, missing files, corrupt files and the list goes on. When approaching data loading consider analyzing and loading things in logical subsets. This will allow you to reduce the amount of time it takes data in the vault and also reduce the amount of time it takes to identify a problem when they arise.
Nothing is worse than starting that process and the end of the day Friday, expecting it to be done on Monday when you get in just to find it didnt complete a 20 minutes after you left the office
Tip of the day: Use the Exclude from Upload command to remove files from the upload process. You can even remove everything down to a single file if you like; if the file has dependencies that need to be added (like an assembly) - dont fear, it will collect those references as well as long as they can be found.
Well have more on this later in a future white paper For now, this tip should pay dividends.