Lifecycles and DWF files in Vault Family 2010

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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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  Lifecycles and DWF files in Vault Family 2010
  October 22, 2009, 11:30 PM Brian Schanen

  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.

   

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