Drawing revision control question

[SteveFrey]

I create all of the shop drawings for our company and I'm trying to find out the best way to track revised drawings.  A lot of times I create a drawing and there are several revisions. The shop works off of a high res. pdf I print for them and we also have a signed version from the customer.  Once in a while the shop gets their hands on an earlier revision and builds from it.  The signed version from the customer is crappy at best and sometimes faxed so working from it is useless. 

I have a space where I can manually enter the REVISION # on the drawing but sometimes I forget to update it.  If I use an automated time stamp <timestamp> for the drawing with date and time (I've seen this done) or some iLogic code, would this show when the document is printed, opened or saved?  Would this be the best way to track them?

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi SteveFrey,

You could use a rule such as this to always check to present the drawing revision number. If you set the event trigger to Before Save:

DrawingRev = InputBox("Drawing Revision Level", "iLogic", iProperties.Value("Project", "Revision Number") )
iProperties.Value("Project", "Revision Number") = DrawingRev
InventorVb.DocumentUpdate(False)

See this link for a tool to get the code into existing drawings:

http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2012/08/major-upgrade-to-the-ilogic-code-injector-...

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[Cadmanto]

Steve,

Sounds like you need to install Vault.  That is the best and easiest method (in my humble opinion) to track multiple revisions of files.

If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".

Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!! 

     

[cbenner]

I have to agree with Scott, some sort of PDM product like Vault can make life both easier and more challenging (believe me), but if you can get people to adhere to some new policies, it can cut down or eliminate old revisions floating around.

[pcrawley]

Totally agree with the Vault comments, but probably worth adding that it should be at least Vault Workgroup if you want Revision control.  Vault Basic only does Versions - which is not the same as Revisions.