Autodesk Vault 5: Autodesk Data Management Solution Continues to Mature

Last year, after the release of Autodesk Vault� 4, I asked you this question, but, just to make sure, I’ll ask it again:

Are You Using Autodesk Vault Yet?
If not, why not? Maybe you’re still concerned about non-Vault users viewing your design data. Maybe you’re concerned about moving your thousands of existing and legacy documents into Vault. Maybe you’re an Autodesk Inventor� user and you don’t want to be constantly bothered with that whole "Check-In/Check-Out" business. Surely by now you’ve at least heard whispers of its features and capabilities, and despite its power, you’re somehow still holding out.

If you’re among the growing number of Vault users today, you already know the benefits it brings in terms of data security and re-use. Vault 5 improves upon those benefits, and offers great new functionality to make using Vault even easier and more powerful. Let’s begin by exploring some of the enhancements to existing functionality:

Security
Vault 5 adds the ability to create Groups to assist with user permissions. When creating new users, you can add them to an existing group, and they will automatically take on the permission level of the group to which they’ve been assigned.

Groups can be assigned various roles, and access to various Vaults. Groups can also be members of other groups, allowing you complete flexibility in how you create your security structure. You can either provide an email distribution list address for the group, or enter individual email addresses.

Move to Folder
With Vault 5, when you move files from one folder to another within the Vault, all referencing documents are automatically repaired and versioned appropriately. Reorganizing vaulted data should now be a painless, risk-free operation.

Copy Design & AutoCAD Electrical
Copy Design was already an incredibly useful tool for Inventor users. Now AutoCAD Electrical users can take advantage of this functionality with a simplified user interface. Copy Design will allow you to reuse, copy, or exclude any element of an AutoCAD Electrical Project. In addition, Vault now supports drawing level vault operations – no longer will you be required to check out an entire project worth of drawings to make a simple change to a single drawing. Vault status icons have also been added to the AutoCAD Electrical Project Manager, making Vault status much more transparent.

Odds are if you’re using AutoCAD Electrical, but not Inventor, you’re probably not using Vault. I can’t blame you. In the past, using Vault with ACAD/E was cumbersome, to say the least. The enhancements that Vault 5 brings, however, should really make you reconsider using Vault to manage your Electrical data. Copy Design in conjunction with AutoCAD Electrical’s powerful automatic annotation update capabilities make an extremely potent combination.

Automatic DWF Creation
Vault 4 brought us the wonderful ability to automatically generate DWF files of documents we added to the Vault. We could also choose to publish these DWF files outside the Vault for non-CAD users. Vault 5 improves on this capability in two important ways.

First, DWF files are automatically hidden in the Vault Explorer interface. While it wasn’t a Herculean effort to suppress their visibility in Vault 4, it’s great that they’re now automatically put behind the scenes.

Second, DWF publishing to a location outside the Vault can now keep the folder structure that exists inside the Vault. No longer will your non-CAD users have to wade through a folder of hundreds or thousands of DWF files to find the one they need.

Purge
For most users, this is probably the most beneficial improvement to an existing feature. Vault 5 gives us the ability to purge versions of individual files.

No longer is Purge an all-or-nothing operation. You have all of the options of the Vault-wide Purge tool (which still exists, by the way), but now they can be applied to a single file or a group of files.

You can also choose certain versions to be excluded from the Purge operation. We now have complete, fine-grained control over the delicate balance between maintaining design history and storage space usage.

While this is all great – especially the changes to DWF Publish and Purge – these improvements probably won’t impact your day-to-day Vault usage much. Some of the new tools might, however…

New Functionality Makes Vault Easier Than Ever
While at its heart Vault is a powerful tool, previous releases didn’t always make putting it to use a simple endeavor. Vault 5 changes that with some additions and changes to fundamental operation to make using Vault as transparent as possible.

Working Folder Changes
One of the biggest potential headaches with previous releases of Vault was the dreaded “Working Folder.” A change to this folder at the wrong time could leave you with a real mess on your hands. Vault 5 gives us the ability to force a consistent working folder for all clients.

This is the first step in making Vault usage easier and more transparent. The above setting would automatically set Vault Explorer’s Working Folder on each client to “C:\Vault”. This limits to a great degree the possibility of local file mis-management while leaving the users a degree of flexibility.

Dialog Suppression and Prompt Management
If you’ve used Vault very much at all, you’ve probably noticed it asks you an awful lot of questions, like “Do you want to check this out?”, “Do you want to check this in?”, “Why is the sky blue?” The odds are pretty good that most of the time, your answer is the same. Wouldn’t it be nice if Vault could just remember that answer?

Vault 5 can do that now, both with Vault Explorer and with the Inventor Add-In. It is now possible to provide standard responses to nearly every dialog and prompt, avoid the need for those dialogs from then on.

As an example, you can now have Vault automatically check out files you start to edit in Inventor, and automatically check them back in when you close those files. Coupled with automatic login, you could set your system up to use Vault one time, and have almost no indication from that point that you were even using it.

Select File From Vault
Vault 5 brings major additions to the way we find vaulted files from within Inventor. We now have all the file searching capabilities of Vault Explorer inside Inventor itself. You have access to your Saved Searches, Shortcuts, as well as the Advanced Find tool. You can even create new Saved Searches from within Inventor.

You might also notice in the above picture a little checkbox titled "Use iMate." That’s right! You can now use iMates on parts placed directly from Vault. That coupled with the improvements to iMates in Inventor 11 make them a much more valuable tool.

You might also notice in the above picture that more information about the file is displayed compared to previous versions. Vault 5 gives us the ability to display the files as a list, or with details. That’s a big deal, because when we display the file details, we can sort the list by those details. No more hunting through a non-alphabetized list to find that one file out of 200 that you need to work on.

Direct Properties Editing via Vault Explorer
That’s right. Vault Explorer 5 gives us the ability to modify file properties from within Vault Explorer itself. No longer do we need to open Inventor just to manage properties. You can even add custom iProperties to existing files if that property already exists within Vault.

You can edit multiple files at a time. You can force values to all caps. You can modify not only Inventor iProperties, but AutoCAD file properties, Microsoft Office file properties, even AutoCAD Block Attributes.

Vault Autoloader
One reason many people give for not implementing Vault is that they have a large amount of existing data. How will they ever get it all into the Vault? Autodesk has provided a fantastic tool to meet this challenge.

The Autoloader can collect, analyze, and prepare a single Inventor project for loading into the Vault. The analysis will indicate the presence of duplicate files, broken references, and anything else that would prevent a part or assembly from being successfully opened in Inventor. It will create a report of these problems so you can get the data ready for import.

If your scan didn’t turn up any issues, or if you’ve fixed the problems and re-run the Autoloader scan to make sure everything was fixed, you’re ready to import the data.

The Autoloader allows you to map folders from the Project File to locations inside the Vault. You no longer need to move a project into a local Vault workspace (risking leaving behind a file or three) and position it in the right spot just to get it into the Vault. Once everything is mapped, the Autoloader copies the files to the new structure in a temporary folder, repairs any resulting referencing issues, and allows you to upload the files into the Vault. Loading existing data into Vault 5 couldn’t be easier.

But Wait, There’s More!
On top of those new features I’ve already discussed, Vault 5 gives us the ability to:

• Perform Full Content Searches on DWG and Office files using standard iFilter technology
• Send DWF Data via email directly from Vault Explorer
• Utilize Inventor’s Task Scheduler to automate file Check-In, Check-Out, and Get Latest Version
• Globally replace one or more files across multiple assemblies, eliminating the need for Design Assistant for file replace operations

What Are You Waiting For?
Existing Vault users should be thrilled with the enhancements that Vault 5 brings, but what about those of you that are still holding out? If you’ve just not had time to investigate what Vault can do for you, I seriously recommend taking a few minutes to think about data-management related problems you’ve had in the past, or that you’re currently having. Odds are, Vault will solve those problems while giving you some fantastic new tools. If you looked at Vault 3 or Vault 4 and weren’t impressed, take a good long look at Vault 5. It makes clear Autodesk’s commitment to providing a quality, ever-improving data management solution that you can trust.