Updating Visualization Files in Vault and Productstream

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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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  Updating Visualization Files in Vault and Productstream
  November 13, 2008, 10:14 PM Brian Schanen

  New 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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Comments

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  November 19, 2008 11:57 AM Joan Lipovetz

  Good to know that the update button will not create a new version of the CAD drawing. Thanks!

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  November 19, 2008 12:16 PM Steve Hilvers

  I agree with Joan...didn't know this was an option til now. I have already made some changes (Unchecked Move, Move Folder, and Rename Folder). Good article!

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  November 19, 2008 12:59 PM Jason Pealo

  I've used the "Update" option for creating dwf's, however if you have a location other than the default set for the automatic creation of dwf files upon check in etc...; (In our case, we store these on the server outside of the Vault) clicking "Update" won't create the dwf in your set location. Instead it creates the file in the same location as the current file being checked in. I'd love to know if there is a way around this.

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  December 9, 2008 06:54 AM Charles Courlander

  This is a subject of great interest to me, and Brian's article provokes a lot of questions. Updating a DWF of a part is clear. What does update of a dwf of an .idw do? Does it first update the drawing with any part modifications before creating a dwf? What does update of a dwf of an assembly do? What does update of a dwf of a drawing of an assembly do? Autodesk are clearly pushing the dwf format. What I need is the possibility of knowing if the dwfs of all children of an assembly, and the dwfs of the drawings of these children are synchronised before I release the assembly in Productstream. Even better would be to have a "one-click" to have all these dwfs updated and synchronised as part of the Producstream release process. I feel Autodesk should be concerned that the Productstream release process does not guarantee that the data being released is not synchronised. We want to use dwf as the format to exhange date - 2d and 3d - with 3rd parties. This can only be done if there is confidence that the data being exchanged represents the release level of the design.