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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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Duplicate File Names in Vault
July 28, 2008 10:31 PMby Brian SchanenVault and Productstream provide the flexibility for Administrators to enforce the use of unique file names. Whether your company mandates unique names or not, duplicate named files can be searched for at any time and Renamed using tools within Vault. This is especially important as a post process to using Autoloader, as Autoloader requires that the Unique File Name option is unchecked.
Begin your Duplicates search from Tools>Administration>Files tab. In the Options area, select the Find Duplicates button. Note: if there are NO duplicates, a message will appear stating so. For these purposes, I made sure there were some files to work with.
IF there are in fact duplicate files, you can expand the message box by clicking Details>>.
This will list all files found with any identical names anywhere within Vault. As this list may be long, there is a Report option in the upper right corner.
Upon selecting to Report the duplicate files list, the Preview window provides the ability to export to a variety of formats – either digital or hard copy. File>Export Document, and select a format.
In this example, Excel shows the file name and different locations within Vault. Each duplicate files will be represented by a row. Hint: Look for patterns here like a similar named folder.
Now the Vault Rename tool can be used. With Productstream installed, you can set up an Automatic Naming scheme to ensure all newly named files are unique.
-Brian Schanen
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Validate your Inventor data before you Vault
July 25, 2008 10:27 AMby Brian SchanenIntroducing a utility for validating your Inventor data before it is checked into Vault. In addition to Data Management concerns like property compliance, iCheck provides the ability to configure and mandate company standards.
Now certified for Inventor 2009, iCHECK for Autodesk Inventor allows organizations to:
- Improve design productivity by reducing time wasted on repetitive tasks
- Eliminate inaccurate designs by automating compliance with defined Standards
- Reduce engineering change orders by significantly reducing design errors
- Provide on-the-job training by the integrated and customizable help system of iCHECK
- Allow outsourced or contract designers to design effectively by utilizing corporate standards in iCHECK
Check out www.incat.com/icheckinventor for a video tour, product details, and a 30 day free trial.
-Brian Schanen
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Change Orders in Productstream 2009
July 17, 2008 10:53 PMby Brian SchanenThe initial create, save and submit process has been reworked to combine these steps into a simple operation. This allows you to save modifications and continue working on the Change Order without having to close, and re-open it. Additionally after the initial save has been completed you will notice that the “Submit” workflow button is active and available to route to the next person in the process. Note that the Change Order number can be manually typed in during the creation stage to allow for missed ECO numbers.
Multiple changes have been made to simplify the markup process. The first is an administrative setting that allows you to store markup files alone side the original file they were marked up with. This option works extremely well when used in conjunction with Inventor and AutoCAD and their “round trip” markup capabilities.
Markups can now be created in various stages with a new “markup” command that is available to anyone with access to Productstream. Additionally all markups will now be visible on the Files tab in addition to being available as attachments to the individual user’s comments.
While in the preview pane for a change order you now have the ability to edit an item directly from the change order where previously the “open” or “go to” actions were available.
In order to streamline the ability to edit and select appropriate routings, any predefined complete change order routing can be selected at any time. This allows you to adjust routings en masse without manually re-creating a routing that might already be in the system.
The Worklist feature now has the due date from the change order listed after the number and is sorted ascending in the list automatically. This allows users to better determine which Change Orders have a priority over another.
And finally, new functionality is available on the Item tab allowing you to easily add related items from the related Bill of Materials or Where Used information for the selected item. In addition to the ability to manually select the desired items, Productstream will add related items that were never previously released through the “Auto Add” command or whenever a Change Order is created from an item.
-Brian Schanen
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Autodesk Vault Mirror utility
July 10, 2008 09:07 PMby Brian SchanenVault Mirror is a utility that retrieves the latest version of all files to a dedicated mirror folder while retaining the folder hierarchy. Vault Mirror is included in the SDK of ADMS since release 2008, prior to that it was available on labs.autodesk.com. Now you can find it here: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Data Management Server 2009\SDK\VS8\CSharp\VaultMirror\bin\Release.
There are multiple ways this tool can be used and probably more than what are listed here:
Making files available for viewing on a network share. Note that this means all files, not subject to any type of release management.
- Use as a Vault Recycle Bin: the administrator can easily restore single files or folders that have been deleted by mistake.
- Merging Vaults: customers may have separate Vaults on the same server or different servers they‘d like to merge. There is no current tool for this process as such, but with Vault Mirror you can pull the latest version of all files, merge in a local space, and then use Autoloader to repopulate a single merged Vault.
You can simply use the user interface to run the utility, with the added benefit that it remembers the last used setting (saved in settings.dat – note that user name and password are not encrypted, so set up a Vault Consumer “guest” account for this).
If you need to automate the process you can use a command line version which you can call with Windows Task Scheduler. Ideally you will use the user interface to run a full miror and then a scheduled partial mirror to only update new and modified files.
Some words on restrictions: it only pulls the latest version of ALL files, no items, no ECO data. For further information check out the readme file.
Special thanks to Thomas from our DM Customer Success Engineer team for this tip! -
Roles and Permission Enhancements in Productstream 2009
July 9, 2008 11:11 PMby Brian SchanenTwo additional roles have been added to Productstream 2009 providing new flexibility in regards to user’s access to functionality in the system. The first role, Vault Basic Editor, removes the user’s ability to Move, Rename and Delete; or any operation that affect many people in the vault. This new role offers an excellent default role for larger organizations who desire more control to file access.
The second role, Productstream Basic Creator removes the user’s ability to Bump an items revision and change its lifecycle as well as removes the ability to delete an item.
Starting with Productstream 2009 roles for Vault operation and Productstream operation will no longer be automatically compounded. For example a Productstream Reviewer role doesn’t automatically have read / write access to vaulted data; this permission will have to be granted exclusive via the inclusion of one of the Vault roles. This means that when setting up Productstream Creator/Reviewers, you'll need to grant them appropriate Vault level rights.
Also new for Productstream 2009 is a dialog giving administrators the ability to adjust the way permissions are propagated to sub folders allowing for greater control and flexibility over security on folders.
-Brian Schanen
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The Vault Knows All...
July 8, 2008 10:49 PMby Brian SchanenThe Search tools in Vault and Productstream 2009 have changed significantly from 2008. These changes were made to provide enhanced capabilities in both flexibility and performance. Searches that previously would run for many minutes to complete (in some cases did not complete at all) now complete in seconds! Also, the flexible new user interface provides a dramatic improvement in usability. These topics and more are discussed here.PerformanceSignificant architectural changes were made by separating the search indexing from the main database. This change impacts the administrator and end-user workflows in many ways. Tasks like search indexing used to be both automatic and immediate. Search indexing is still automatic but it is no longer immediate. After a file is added to the system it could be a couple of minutes before the file appears in a search. For most customers this will complete in minutes, in large environments it might take as long as a couple of hours. Hopefully this one time inconvenience is a fair trade for the performance gains.Raw speed - We have plenty of it! As an example one customer data set with over four hundred thousand files in Productstream 2008 experienced a basic search time of over 280 seconds. With Vault 2009 this was reduced to less than 15 seconds. Another customer data set took over 80 seconds to display the Item master with Productstream 2008. With Productstream 2009 the Item master displays in less than 5 seconds.PagingIn the 2008 products we have a performance loop hole that would allow an individual user to tie up the server and force everyone else to wait. If a user performed an unbounded search the server is consumed with that search until it completes. By blocking this shortcoming Paging provides consistent performance for the environment as a whole. All users receive an equally prompt response from the server at all times.With Paging each user receives a page of results when performing a search, viewing the Item or Change Order list. The size of the page is set by the administrator. The default page size is 100 records. The page model used here is NOT like a web page where the user moves forward and backward. Instead this page model is compounding, typically referred to as a ‘More’ model. This allows a user to perform a search, receive the first 100 results (using default values for the example.) The user then selects the More button which will result in the second page being appended to the first. At this point the user is viewing 200 records. The user may continue to select the More button until it no longer appears. The absence of the More button indicates that all records are visible. Usability has shown that most users refine the search if their goal was not found on the first page.TokensThe new search system indexes Tokens in place of whole property values. This means that all property values are separated into individual searchable chunks known as tokens. Tokens offers some powerful capabilities but to use it effectively does require a basic understanding. We will start with the explanation of how property values are broken into tokens. The following grid shows file names as an example. On the right side of the grid you can see how each file name is breaks down in to tokens.File NameTokensA-055401-321.iptA-055401-321IptGreat White Shark.docGreatWhiteSharkDocGr8work.xlsGr8WorkXlsThe rules for converting to tokens are as follows.All adjacent characters of like type are grouped into a single token:Alphabetic (A, B, C, …Z)Numeric (0, 1, 2,…9)Special punctuation (-, _,@,…$)Some special characters are recognized as searchable objects. All other punctuation and special characters are not searchable and therefore are not contained in the tokens. In the previous example, notice that all file extensions are a separate token because they are separated by a '.' even though the '.' is not a searchable character. The following list contains all the special characters that are searchable. Any special character not on this list is not searchable.Dollar$Dash-Underscore_Symbol@Plus+Pound#SearchingUsing our new understanding of how property values break down to tokens we can be smart about how we find our data. We will use the following sample set to explore some examples.File NameVendorMaterialAuthorDesign00.idwFabricatedAlumDesDesign01.dwgFabricatedAlumDesDesign02.idwFabricatedAlumAlDesign001.idwFabricatedAlumAlDesign023.prtFabricatedABSAlDesign054.prtFabricatedABSEdDesign055.dwgFabricatedABSEdPart01.iptAutodeskTitaniumPart02.iptAutodeskTitaniumThe obvious advantage is the ability to search for a token independently. We are not limited to searching for individual tokens, but it is an option.This change provides the ability to search for values that were previously only available as part of a larger search result.EXAMPLE 01Basic Search: 'Des'Result in 2008:Design00Design01Design02Design001Design023Design054Design055Des (Design00.idw) - Finds both Author and File nameDes (Design01.dwg) - Finds both Author and File nameAutodesk (Part01.ipt)Autodesk (Part02.ipt)Result in 2009:Des (Design00.idw) – Hits only on AuthorDes (Design01.dwg) – Hits only on AuthorThe precise search results of 2009 are achieved by NOT assuming wild cards. In 2008 a star ‘*’ wildcard was automatically appended before and after the search value.EXAMPLE 02Basic Search for: '0?'Result in 2008:Design00Design01Design02Design001Design023Design054Design055Result in 2009:Design00Design01Design02If you are familiar with the wildcard ‘?’ you know that it is typically a wildcard for a single character. This is correctly represented in 2009 but in 2008 it is not. The reason is that in 2008 all basic searches are automatically enclosed with wildcards. The resulting search contains the ‘*’ on both the front and back end which results in a search that looks like ‘*0?*’. The result of this basic search in 2008 for ‘0?’ is effectively no different from a basic search for ‘0’.Another change between 2008 and 2009 is the behavior of the search condition ‘Contains.’ Previously in 2008 a search of type 'Contains' was automatically executed with both leading and trailing wildcards. The result is that a search of type 'Contains' in 2009 supports trailing wildcards.To explain how wildcards are applied to tokens we have created the following diagram. The important aspect to understand is that the wild card only applies to one token. As shown below the wild card does NOT span across multiple tokens.In this example, we are searching for the string: Gr*kStrings that are foundGrok“Grok”greek1“greek”, “1”GreenEggsAndPork“GreenEggsAndPork”GRK-000003$“GRK”, “-“, “000003”,”$”Strings that are NOT foundGreat White Shark“Great”, “White”, “Shark”gr8work“gr”, “8”, “work”Grand_Trunk Railroad“Grand”, “_”, “Trunk”, “Railroad”GR-000001-PK-5“GR”, “-“, “000001”, “-“, “PK”, “5”ConclusionSearching with Vault and Productstream 2009 is both faster and more precise than previous releases. This improvement is achieved through the introduction of token based search index and paging. Understanding how to utilize the benefits of a token based search system provides lightning fast searching with surgical precision.Thanks Ross!
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JOIN Productivity Tool for Vault and Inventor
July 8, 2008 12:40 AMby Brian SchanenJOIN engineering provides extended funtionality through dialog boxes that interact with Autodesk Inventor and Vault. Two versions are available - Free and Professional. The iProp Editor and JOIN Administrator are a few of my favorite tools in this utility. You can download a 90 trial and purchase either a 2008 or 2009 version here: http://www.joinengineering.com/index.html.
-Brian Schanen