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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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Going back in time – Get Previous Version with Autodesk Vault
November 26, 2008 08:46 AMby Brian SchanenAutodesk Vault at its core is version management - and it does an excellent job at it. This means any file upon initial check in is assigned version 1. Check this file out and modify it, check back in and Vault stores it as version 2. And the cycle continues…
So, how does one go back to a previous version? Let’s start with an existing Inventor part. An existing vaulted ipt is checked out, modified, and then checked in from Inventor. From the browser, notice that the Vault status icon.
Meanwhile, back in Vault, a quick look at the history window shows the new version at 4. Note the modification in the thumbnail.
To go back in time, before the last modification, the file is located in Vault. With a right click, select Get Previous from the context menu. Choose from the versions in the drop down list and click OK.
Now, the next step is critical. To access this prior version of the file, use the Inventor Open dialog, NOT the Open From Vault.
As the file is open, switch over to the Vault browser and note the Vault status icon. This is the indication that it is an older version and its ‘out of date’. Exactly what we want in this case.
Now, at this point we can perform a Save As and branch off to another design, or we can make THIS the latest version. To consume this version and the latest, right click and Check Out the file. Note: do NOT check the Get Latest Version option.
The file is simply checked out to you without retrieval from Vault. In other words, you are telling Vault that you want this to be the new version. A right click, Check In will send this back to Vault, with the model in the prior state feature-wise.
A look to the history window now shows this file at version 5. No, we did not go back to version 3. Vault always moves the version numerically forward. But the design is back where it should be, and of course there is history of the version 4 modifications.
-Brian Schanen
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Productstream and Active Directory integration
November 20, 2008 10:04 PMby Brian SchanenAutodesk Productstream delivers several roles and permission levels to data in Vault. Individual users can be created manually with a username, password, email address and Vault permission level ranging from Administrator to Vault Consumer. These users can also be added to Groups inside Productstream, and optionally let the Group role define the role of each participant in that group. And Groups can contain other Groups and so on. When leveraging Vault folder level permissions – also known as Access Control Lists or ACL’s – the use of Groups makes user management easier. This is a best practice for establishing folder hierarchy and the overall security model of your Vault.
Getting back to the creation of users, Productstream makes the job of creating the users as easy as importing them from your company’s domain either one at a time, or by domain group. The users or groups will appear in Productstream as their windows login ie:<domain>\<username> .
The import from Active Directory is configured after installation of Productstream. This can be performed at the server through the ADMS Console or from the Productstream client if you log in as an administrator role. Go to Tools>Administration>Security tab and select either Users to import individuals or Group to import domain groups. From the Actions pull down menu, choose Import Domain user/group.
This provides several benefits. First, user will have one less login and password to remember. When logging in to Productstream, through Inventor, AutoCAD, or MS Office, they can select the Windows Authentication option. As the user attempts to Authenticate the Autodesk Data Management Server (ADMS) will communicate with AD to ensure the user is still valid and if they are, will allow the user access to the system. Also, if the user has been disabled in AD, Productstream will deny the users access.
Administrators can optionally allow for the automatic creation of user accounts in Productstream any time a user attempts to Authenticate with Productstream and AD and the user is found in a valid AD group. Finally, this functionality will mean that for new hires, accounts will automatically be created without having to do this explicitly within Productstream.
-Brian Schanen
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Updating Visualization Files in Vault and Productstream
November 13, 2008 10:14 PMby Brian SchanenNew to Vault and Productstream 2009 is an administrative setting to control the Visualization files (a.k.a DWF) that are attached to Inventor and AutoCAD files in Vault upon Check In . These are the files that you see in the View tab in Vault Explorer, the Item Master, a Change Order, and Web Client. In short, the DWF is the currency of Vault and Productstream. This week we’ll examine some rules surrounding the attachment of DWF’s.
You may have noticed that during certain file management operation in Vault, the DWF file is removed. For instance, upon renaming an Inventor file, the newly named file may not have a DWF. The control of this is managed from a dialog box in Tools>Administration>Visualization tab, under the Commands button.
These options are Vault-wide and if checked, will remove the DWF attachment after the command is completed. This will appear as “Unable to view the selected file…” in the View tab.
So, why do we have this as an option? During commands like Rename, Replace, Copy, etc the new files would have the old DWF files brought forward. Without these settings, viewing a renamed DWF for instance would have the OLD name. As you can see, some commands warrant a removal of the DWF, while others are not – like Move, Rename Folder, etc.
Now, how do you correct the missing DWF’s? In the View tab of Vault Explorer, Item, or Change Order, there will be a button on the right side to Update the DWF. Selecting this will create a DWF on-demand without versioning the CAD file. This can be performed at any time, without having to open with Inventor or AutoCAD to check back in.
-Brian Schanen
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Vault and AutoCAD Xrefs
November 7, 2008 02:12 PMby Brian SchanenAutoCAD Xrefs have been around for years, and provide benefits to design workflows in any industry. The good news is that Autodesk Vault honors the link to referenced DWGs within an AutoCAD file – also known as Xrefs. From inside the AutoCAD User interface, there is a ‘browser ’ to manage External References that can be turned visible and docked to the left side of the window. When you open a DWG with Xrefs, the files will be listed. In the following image, I have enabled Tree View to display the nested dwg’s under the parent file.
Now, there is a specific type of Xref we’ll examine in this article. Common Xrefs like titleblocks, borders, standard notation, or even common ‘Library’ geometry may be referenced in from a shared network location. This enables the Administrators to make global changes to standard geometry and this in turn affects all parent DWG’s globally. A pretty nice setup, but one that should be understood when using Vault.
The challenge is checking in the Xref and its placement within Vault. By default, during a Check In from any AutoCAD platform, if the Xref is outside of the Working Folder, it will be nested under the parent file in a subfolder. The following example shows a Vault folder that will be created (Xrefs) to contain the DIN_A3.dwg.
This is NOT the desired location of the Xref as this is a titleblock, not project-specific geometry. Furthermore, in the following image a different parent AutoCAD file uses the same Xref titleblock/border drawing. Upon Check In of this file, the DIN_A3.dwg file will be placed in yet another ‘Xrefs’ subfolder.
The problem compounds itself resulting in duplicate named folders in Vault containing the same titleblock/border drawings. But there is a great solution for this…
The solution involved creation of a Vault Library folder for these common Xrefs, then configuring them to ‘know’ where the Xrefs are Checked In from. At the Vault Explorer root, right click and create a Library folder. I suggest keeping the same name as the network folder name.
Next you’ll need to right click and modify the properties of the Xref Vault Library folder.
In the Map to shared Server entry, add the location of the Xref Title Block location. Upon Check In to Vault, any files found in this network folder will be redirected to this Vault Library folder. Remember that the Vault location of the Library folder is under the Vault root, parallel to the Workspace folder, and most important, above and away from the DWG parent files.
Now when the parent DWG is Checked In, the DIN_A3.dwg Xref is placed in the Xrefs folder, and just once. When Check In occurs for other files that use the same common titleblock/border dwg’s, the Xrefs will already be in Vault.
It is recommended to store all Xrefs that are used across multiple DWG’s – and rarely modified – in a Vault Library folder using the procedure outlined here. Once the Xrefs are loaded into this location, the AutoCAD Vault add-in will download these to the Vault Working Folder the next time the parent DWG is opened. The controlled copy of the titleblocks, borders, and other common Xref files are now in Vault if global modifications need to be made.
-Brian Schanen