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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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Securing Company CAD Standards with Vault
March 5, 2008, 09:45 AM Brian SchanenAutodesk Vault provides the necessary foundation for controlling access to all of your company’s engineering related data – and beyond. Aside from the data used in your designs, Vault is also an excellent place to control your company standards. In this article, we’re going to take a look at configuring your Vault to house your Inventor Templates and Styles.
The location of where Inventor looks for Style and Templates is set in the Project file (.ipj). In addition, the ipj holds settings for the Inventor Styles.
Initially, the .ipj states the path for Templates and Styles as [Default], which points Inventor to load these definitions from Tools>Application Options>File tab in Inventor. If the .ipj states anything other than [Default], this is an override and Inventor will use that new path. This is where Vault comes in…
Whether you use the Autoloader to populate Vault or you create your own, you will need to configure the Vault project file with the override settings. There are several options to the location of the Templates and Design Data – local (each users’ machine), or network (common shared location).
If you opt for the local, the Design Data and Templates folder will reside adjacent to each users’ Workspace on their machine. Edit the Inventor Project file (you may need to Check it out from Vault) to have the folder for Templates and Design Data as relative to the .ipj, or as a subfolder. In other words, Templates will be stored in .\Templates, Styles will be stored in .\Design Data, and so on. This also follows suit with the Content Center Files, Libraries, and the Workspace in a Vault project file.
This method is particularly nice as it allows Vault users to be mobile, and carry the data with them while working offline. This is also my recommendation on how to set up each users’ machine.
If the network location is your goal, you will need to enter an ‘override’ working folder mapping. This is achieved by editing the properties of the Vault folders. Note that the network option conflicts with the Administrative option to set the Working Folder for all users. You have to change this to allow each user to define their working folder. Whichever method you choose, when you are finished, your Vault folder structure will resemble the image below.
-Brian Schanen
Comments
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March 12, 2008 07:54 AM Jorge Emilio Lopera Ledesma
Brian, I'm working with Vault2008+AIP2008. I renamed the PC, then I have to reinstall de ADMS, then, when I tried to attach my vaults, appears that cannot attached, because said "that vault already exists". Searched at the Discussion groups and nothing founded. I have resolved giving another name to the .mdf , .ldf and filestore folder file with another name, I know that's not the correct procedure but it works. Thanks
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March 20, 2008 01:40 AM Arjen Blok
Brian, I use the local option indeed if I have customers with users outside he origanisation. There is just one catch. Users have to synchronize these folders (templates, design data) manually from the Vault each time they start working with Inventor. Is there a way to automate this, perhaps in Vault/Productstream 2009? Thanks
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