Under The Hood

Autodesk Vault Update 1 is LIVE

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:14:00 -0700

Announcing Update 1 for Autodesk Vault 2010 family of products. This contains several roll ups of previously hotfixes, as well as new addressed issues like:

Property related operations (such as Checkin, Property ReIndex) may stop responding as a result of application pool becoming automatically disabled in Windows 2008 operating system. This Update 1 addresses this operating system incompatibility

Custom properties with white space do not get brought into Vault 2010 correctly

Improved behavior of Copy Design of a substituted part resulting in the new part referencing the original derived assembly

In a rare case a software license may not be released appropriately

Reinstate the Locked File Icon for user visibility

Files locked in a 2009 dataset, and then migrated to 2010, cannot be unlocked. Receive message "You do not have adequate permissions to perform this operation." ACL cannot be removed.

Note the Lock Icon reinstatement. This is my favorite part of this update. Whether you use released Items or document lifecycle states, this will show properly in Inventor.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=14161879&linkID=9261341

Enjoy!

New utility: Effective Folder Permissions

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:32:56 -0700

With Vault Workgroup, Collaboration, and Manufacturing, folders have the option of security through Access Control Lists (ACL). Doug Redmond, author of “It’s All Just Ones and Zeros” Blog has posted a great utility to view a matrix of permissions by user. This is nice for a ‘forest-from-the-trees’ view of Vault folder security. Enjoy!

http://justonesandzeros.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/effective-folder-permissions.html

Autodesk University Virtual

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:28:00 -0700

As a follow up to the list of Data Management classes at AU2009, this year you can attend Autodesk University - virtually.

While the flagship event (AU 2009 Las Vegas, Dec 1-3, 2009) remains a not-to-be-missed experience, many are not able to physically attend. To that end, Autodesk University Virtual promises travel-challenged customers, “some of the best of AU right to your desktop”

Complete details are on the AU Virtual website, but here are the highlights…

· Event date: December 1-4, 2009.

· 50+ Classes and Sessions- streamed “live” http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=virtual_class_listing .

· A “Premium Pass” (full access) is only US$99.

· All Subscription customers receive a free “Premier Pass”.

· A “Free Pass” (limited access) is available to anyone.

· How AU Virtual compares with AU “On-Site”.

Autodesk University Data Management Courses

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:13:00 -0700

If you have plans to attend Autodesk University in a few weeks, here is a list of suggested classes covering Data Management. I'll be teaching a few of these and particiapting in others. There's a class for all levels too - from beginer Vault users to power users and administrators.

MA104-2 Setting Up Autodesk® Vault Manufacturing for AutoCAD® Electrical

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Randy Brunette, Brunette Technologies, LLC

MA104-4 Integrating Autodesk® Vault Manufacturing with Enterprise Applications

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Jim Dodds, The vdR Group, Inc.

AU114-1 Basics of Autodesk® Vault

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Todd Nicol, Autodesk

MA9214-2 A Day in the Life with Autodesk® Vault Workgroup

Session Type: Virtual Class

Speaker: Brian Schanen, Autodesk

MA9114-2 Cashing In on the Vault and Retrieving the Treasures

Session Type: Virtual Class

Speaker: Allen Gager, Design Engineer A.T. Ferrell

MA122-6 Cracking the Vault

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Hywell Herrero, Autodesk

DL204-1 Looking Into the Crystal Ball: A Sneak Peek at the Future of Autodesk® Data Management

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Todd Nicol, Autodesk

Co Speaker: Brian Schanen, Autodesk

MA204-1 How to Effectively Adopt Autodesk® Vault for Data Management

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Pascal Le Guellec, Autodesk

PD204-1 Autodesk® Vault and Design Review: Managing the Change in P&IDs

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Siva Thankappan, Autodesk

MA208-3 Scaling your Data Management with Autodesk® Vault Collaboration

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Pascal Le Guellec, Autodesk

MA214-2 Autodesk® Vault Workgroup 2010: It Goes to Eleven

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Allen Gager, Design Engineer A.T. Ferrell

Co Speaker: Brian Schanen, Autodesk

MA218-4 Using Autodesk® Vault for Collaboration Between Purchaser and Suppliers

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Driss Yammouri, Autodesk

MA304-3 Autodesk® Vault Manufacturing to SAP® Made Easy

Session Type: 90-Minute Class

Speaker: Klaus LOERINCZ Autodesk Consulting

MA304-4 CAD Manager's Guide to Document Management with the Autodesk® Family of Products, Pt1

Session Type: Multi-Part Session

Speaker: Brian Schanen, Autodesk

Co Speaker: Pascal Le Guellec, Autodesk

MA308-3 CAD Manager's Guide to Document Management with the Autodesk® Family of Products, Pt2

Session Type: Multi-Part Session

Speaker: Brian Schanen Customer Success Engineer Autodesk

Co Speaker: Pascal Le Guellec Customer Success Engineer Autodesk

CM318-3 Autodesk® Vault Workgroup Round Table

Session Type: Unconference

Speaker: Allen Gager Design Engineer

Co Speaker: Brian Schanen, Autodesk

See you in Las Vegas...

-Brian Schanen

Lifecycles and DWF files in Vault Family 2010

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:30:00 -0700

Visualization (DWF) files and Categories

This 3 part tech tip will take us through how best to manage file categorization and the issues associated with categorizing “Visualisation” files.

DWF file behavior:

As we are all aware each CAD document when added from the related CAD application typically generates a dwf file for viewing purposes. These can also be generated using view update. The dwf then resides as a hidden file attached to our CAD document, to view dwf the hidden files in Vault go to Tools > Options > Display Hidden Files.

In a healthy Vault all CAD files should have a dwf along side it with corresponding name:

Part1.ipt = Part1.ipt.dwf

In a healthy Vault Workgroup, Collaboration or Manufacturing environment these dwf files should also have the following characteristics:

No or “Base” Category assigned - No Revision - No lifecycle state

Although a visualization file is linked to the CAD document it does not follow the same lifecycle rules or even necessarily keep pace with file versions. For example it could be that you remove visualization files during file property edits, move operations etc and do not recreate till the next file version OR you can recreate dwf files using the “Update” button meaning there are more dwf versions than file versions.

By categorizing dwf files this will generally apply a default lifecycle state, typically “Work In Progress”, when you release your CAD file allowing consumers to view the files the dwf remains work in progress and cannot be viewed. Conversely if you were to release a dwf the file would be locked and you could not update it.

Preventing Categorization

Typically there are two main ways this can occur:

1. Default document status not set to “None” or “Base”– If you do opt to have all documents go to a particular category with lifecycle scheme and revisions this WILL also send dwf files to that category, the “None” or “Base” option should always be the default rule

2. Badly worded Assignment Rules – Assignment rules for ipt files for example should be created as “File Name Ends With .ipt” NOT “File Name Contains .ipt” as this second rule will still apply to dwf files of a part (Part1.ipt.dwf).

Replacing Visualization Files

Firstly remove the categorisation error by reverting to default category is “None”, “Base” or changing the assignment rules to exclude dwf

In order to resolve this issue you will need to recreate all dwf files as simply changing category will not work here as the dwf files will still be left with lifecycle states. The procedure here is quite workable for Vault Collaboration and Manufacturing which include Job server. It will likely be a great deal more labor intensive or workflow orientated in Vault Workgroup.

Create search

· Log into Vault Explorer as administrator

· Run a search for “file contains dwf” and “Category Name is not empty”

· This should return all affected dwf files.

Delete files

· Select all and “delete”, you will need to be administrator here to override the error dialog as these files are in use.

Create new dwf files.

· For this you will ideally need to ensure that the Jobserver is enabled (Tools > Administration > Vizualisation > Enable Job Server)

· On one or more machines start a Jobserver (Start > All Programs > Autodesk > Autodesk Data Management > Tools > Autodesk Job Processor for Vault) or script a Jobserver to start at a certain time.

· Note: The more machines used here the faster the dwf creation will be done – farming the task out across several PC’s which have Inventor / AutoCAD installed on them.

· Now search for all files requiring newly created dwf files, if all do then simply search on CAD files, else search on “Visualisation attachment is None”. Select around 1000 files from the find results and from the “Actions Menu” select “Update View > Queue Update”

· The thousand files will then be added to a Job Queue and processed in turn – the progress can be monitored from the Vault Manufacturing client by selecting > Tools > Job Queue. Any errors will be listed in this dialog and resubmitted for processing.

Updates for Autodesk Vault 2010 Family

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:45:00 -0700

For reference, below is a list of updates now available for the Autodesk Vault Family of Products and some performance improvements in Inventor 2010 SP1. See the list below and related ReadMe’s for information on the updates:

AutoCAD® Inventor® Professional Suite 2010

· Autodesk Inventor 2010 Service Pack 1

Autodesk® Vault 2010

· Hotfix - ACM DWG Block Tags Property Extraction

· Autodesk Design Review 2010 Toolbar Update

· AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 - Autodesk Vault 2010 (Server) Support Patch

· AutoCAD Civil 2009 - Autodesk Vault 2010 (Server) Support Patch

· Hotfix - Properties are not being extracted in AWS installation

Autodesk® Vault Workgroup 2010

· Hotfix - Release Bias Switch

· Hotfix - ACM DWG Block Tags Property Extraction

· Autodesk Design Review 2010 Toolbar Update

· Hotfix - Property mapping on Inventor DWG files may not update and may show an incorrect

Autodesk® Vault Collaboration 2010

· Hotfix - Release Bias Switch

· Hotfix - ACM DWG Block Tags Property Extraction

· Hotfix - Web Client Fixes

· Autodesk Design Review 2010 Toolbar Update

· Hotfix - Property mapping on Inventor DWG files may not update and may show an incorrect

Autodesk® Vault Manufacturing 2010

· Hotfix - Release Bias Switch

· Hotfix - ACM DWG Block Tags Property Extraction

· Hotfix - Web Client Fixes

· Hotfix - Item State Change and Update issue

· Autodesk Design Review 2010 Toolbar Update

· Hotfix - Lost Detail ID, Import Item changes decimal value

· Hotfix - Property mapping on Inventor DWG files may not update and may show an incorrect

Autodesk Vault Report Template Authoring

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:00:00 -0700

Vault Collaboration 2010 and Vault Manufacturing 2010 provide the ability to generate formatted reports representing data contained in a vault. Reports can be generated for files, items, and change orders. The Vault objects that appear in a report are determined by the search options specified in the Advanced Find dialog.

The properties that are displayed in the report, as well as the report layout, are specified in a report template file that is specified when generating a report. Through the report template, you have complete control of the report content, layout, and format.

This white paper will take you through the steps to create templates to meet your company’s needs:

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/report_template_authoring.pdf

-Brian Schanen

Autodesk Vault Connect integration with Axapta

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:45:00 -0700

Autodesks Vault Connect is an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) platform that facilitates the exchange of data between Autodesk Vault Manufacturing and other enterprise systems. These systems can include a wide variety of enterprise applications such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Electronic Content Management (ECM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

The following video demonstrates the integration of Autodesk Vault Manufacturing with an ERP system (Axapta) using Autodesk Vault Connect.

Managing Items with Vault Manufacturing 2010

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:30:00 -0700

One of the significant improvements to Vault Manufacturing in 2010 is the introduction of state based document securities. This functionality has been leveraged to manage access to files associated with Released items and introduces a new, more flexible way to manage CAD file access.

From the Tools > Administration dialog > Items tab selecting “Security” displays the Access Control List used to determine permissions for files linked to Items outside of Work-In-Process (I.e. files linked to Items in Released, For Review and Obsolete states).

By default this is configured to permit “Read” only access for “Everybody” but here we will go through the steps required to modify these access permissions to allow a more flexible process to make administrative file changes not constituting item revisions.

While every file, associated to a Released Item, is locked as read only, no changes are possible; this prevents unauthorized or accidental design changes. Using the access control list (ACL) we can now create a specific user permitted to make minor file changes to correct spelling mistakes, add missing dimensions or update title block information. This type of modification could be referred to as “Quick Change”. Create this workflow with the following steps:

Create an Administrative Change user (QC for example) with the correct rights and roles (Doc Editor Level1 at least) – DO NOT include this user in any groups and make sure this user is assigned a password!

Remove “Everybody” from the ACL and Add all groups and set them to “Allow” ‘Read’ and “Deny” ‘Modify’ and ‘Delete’

Change the QC user access to “Allow” ‘Read’ and ‘Modify’; make sure to “Deny” ‘Delete’.

You can now, as required, log into the Vault through AutoCAD, Inventor, etc. as QC user, make the modifications (Change Title block on Drawings/Migrate Model files etc., add missing dimensions, etc.) while Item consumers still access the latest effective release. When finished with files updates check the file back in and log out of user QC, you now need to update the ITEM.

Updating the Item without 'bumping' the Revision

With the file(s) now modified ensure nobody else is logged into Vault during the item(s) update. Log in as a Vault Administrator and go to the Tools > Administration dialog and select the Item tab.

1. Click on “Rules…” and select transition ‘From Released To WIP’; set Bump Revision to None (or Bump Secondary Revision if history needs to be kept)

2. Select the ITEM(s) requiring update, RMB click and select “Change State”; then select “Work In Progress”.

3. Right click again and “Update” the items

4. “Change State” to “Released”

5. Repeat Step 2 to restore the rule on Released -> WIP to “Bump Primary Revision”

You have now made your “Quick Change” to your files over time reducing the need to repeat the sensitive procedure required to change Revision Bumping and Item update. This can be done as a batch process in a very short time space (typically one evening of afterhours work).

Video - Creating Reports with Autodesk Vault Collaboration and Manufacturing

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:05:00 -0700

Autodesk Vault Collaboration and Vault Manufacturing provide one-touch report generation based on search results and using pre-defined templates. Such templates will allow for custom report formats suiting a variety of customer needs.

Users can rapidly generate reports based on search results to gain visibility into engineering productivity, design progress, and data evolution. You can develop standard reporting templates, making it easier for everyone to access and analyze critical data. This allows a company to quickly report on items to gain visibility into the important tasks, performance, and design progress. For instance, you can analyze data points such as average time to close engineering changes, number of changes requested by department, average versions, etc.

This begins by selecting the new ‘Report’ button is now available from the Find dialog. The user is prompted to pick from a list of pre-defined report templates before presenting the full-color report in that format (above). The templates are completely customizable, and new ones can be added to the list.

I have compiled a video overview of this new functionality for 2010, posted out on Autodesk’s YouTube channel. Enjoy!

-Brian Schanen