Forcing assembly to use old versions

[Anonymous]

I've encountered a problem in one of our drawings. When we're working on a project we use a overall layout in which we place all of the featured machines and constructions.

Now when we've done a project let's say a year ago. Since then some of our users made minor changes in the base products. Now when a costumer asks us to make a modification on one of the machines the layout of the previous project is used again.

Now because some of our users made these changes on the base machinery the vault will take the latest version of all parts. This is where the problem starts. The layout isn't corresponding anymore with the actual machinery on sight. These minor changes are also applied on the layout drawing.

Is it possible to force a assembly to use a particular version of a drawing? i.e. If i used version 7 of a drawing while making a layout can i force it to always use version 7 when opening this drawing? This way my layout will always correspondent with the actual situation on site.

Currently we're using Inventor 2009 and Vault 2009 and we're about to upgrade to Inventor 2013 and Vault 2013.

Is there any possibility to deal with our problem?

[olearya]

Hi There, 

Sorry for the delayed response - this can be addressed in a couple of ways but really this is best managed with file revision functionality available in Vault Workgroup and above.  These products include revision bias tools enabling you to  open at historic milestones.

As you suggest in basic Vault the system defaults to open latest, you can try to get around this by retrieving locally specific versions of sub components but this becomes quite difficult with a large number of files and sub-assemblies.  

Alternatively there is a functionality called "labels" (see wikiHelp here).  This would permit you to take a "snapshot" of a design at a point in time allowing you to retrieve it later via pack and go.

Ultimately this is not as simple as revision controls, perhaps talk to your reseller and see if there is enough value in moving to one of the other flavors of Vault.