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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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Two Small Inventor Project and Vault Tricks
June 28, 2007 01:05 PMby Brian RoepkeAutodesk Vaults Autoloader is designed to use a specific structure for its project file for many good reasons. One of the specifications is the Name Designs for the Workspace, which some users object to. This does not need to be seen directly in Inventor, as you can use Inventors project file to give the Design folder a Nickname which perhaps suits you better.
In Inventors Project Editor click on the double arrow in the right side (red circle) to show the Workspace:
By renaming (Upper red marker - RMB on Workspace, select Edit, and Type Projects instead of Workspace), you will get a nickname for your Workspace. It will also be used in the naming of any frequently used subfolders (lower rd marker), as that folder rightly should be named .\Designs\Parts
Inside the Open dialog in Inventor it will look like the following:
The top folder usually named Workspace is labelled Projects even if the actual folder name is something else as shown in the tool tip.
A second tip is using Shortcuts to get to files and folder quickly when using Open from Vault. As seen above entries in the Frequently Used Subfolders section are handy when using regular Open in Inventor. The nearest equivalent when using Open from Vault is Create Shortcut. While using Open from Vault RMB on a folder and select Create Shortcut like seen below
When created the Shortcut will show up in the left column, and clicking on it will place you Inside the selected folder in Vault directly. When the number of folder grows, they can be renamed and organized by RMB in the empty area and select Create Group as Shown below:
The Shortcuts are accessible also inside Vault, and they are saved per client in an Xml file. So if it is wanted to copy a number of defined Shortcuts from one client to others find and copy the file:
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Autodesk\VaultCommon\Servers\Services_Security_01_02_2007\localhost\Vaults\ \Objects\Shortcuts.xml
Beware that there can only be one file, so any existing modifications will be overwritten when copying.