Items from Vault that are not checked out should...

[Quickcola]

Items from Vault that are not checked out should simply be read only.

How is it that if I close an item that I am not checked out that I can save that item?

Worse, why is it that Inventor incites me to save items that are not checked out?

It is a pain to constantly keep an eye on what Inventor wants to save and always be watching close so as to not save items that I wish were read only.

Let's say I am working on an assembly. In this assembly I have new parts that I have created and are checked out. But I also have parts that are reused, are not checked out and should be in read only form.

As I work on my project, I often need to "consult" the parts that are reused in order to create my new parts. I do not wish to change the old parts in any way. The old parts are also used in other projects and any change could be problematic.

But, since these parts are not read only, although I think they should, Inventor often thinks I changed something by simply looking closer at a sketch or whatnot, (in order to open a sketch I need to hit "edit sketch") and at the end of my session Inventor will prompt me to save items that it very well knows are not checked out because it will even warn me.

See example on "Save Prompt.jpg"

In this example, the list is short. Sometimes after several hours of design, the list can be a pain to sort out what should and should not be saved.

The situation is even worse when several designers are all working on the same project at the same time because we are all modifying different areas simultaneously which are co-dependent. (The height of your part will affect the height of mine but the length of my part will affect the length of yours, ect.) Not only do you have to keep an eye on what is being saved, but also on what is being updated from the vault.

God forbid you missed an item from the list illustrated on my "Save Prompt.jpg" and you are trying to update from vault things that should be read only. You get another prompt warning you that " File 'filename.iam' is NEWER than the data in the vault. Are you sure you want to overwrite it? " In this case you don't even see a list, you just go one at a time with a prompt for each file or hit "Yes To All".

I just think that things would be so much easier if the save option for things not checked out was just not there.

You could have a prompt warning you that you are read only when opening a file, just like the already existing prompt giving you the option to checkout an unchecked out file.

[karthur1]

I agree with you about the not being able to save non checked out files. I think the reason that they do this, is so that if you did make a change to a part (but you didnt check it out) you could still save it and not loose your work.  Really though, if you did want to NOT loose your work, you should be checking it out when you make an edit.

The vault team has done some really good work with Vault 2015 in regards to not allowing edits to out-of-date files (like when you have an old version locally).  If, for some reason you do want to work with an old version, it is still possible.  It is just as not as easy as it once was, whick is good.  They just need to go a little bit futher and stop allowing saves to files that are not checked out.

[Quickcola]

What you did to my pic is exactly what I do almost every time i complete a session. Thing is that is a short list i used only to demonstrate. In real life, after a few hours of editing a new assembly containing hundreds of parts, with subassemblies and derived parts ect, that list is really long and a pain to go through.

I have no problem with being able to edit a file that is not checked out, you can always edit a read only file, you just can't save it. If you would really want to save it without checking out, you would need to do a "save as" in order to change the file name.

Another real problem here with the way it works, is that if you do save an unchecked out file, the vault will now consider it as the most recent. In the future let's say you actually do need to revise the file, you then need to update it backwards before editing it or risk missing something if you don't.

If they did make improvements to the 2015 version, i will be thankful; we are still on 2014 at the moment.

[h.schkorwaga]

If i could spend thousnads of Kudos to this ideas i would!

The cad-software i was working with for years was capable of this. Starting working with Inventor I wondered why this proven concept isn't implemented here too.

Since we are working with Inventor we had a lot of troubles with this. we overwrite files by ourselves without recognizing. Approved files get overwritten. Assemblies can't be checked in then because this approved and locked files need a save which is impossible. So you have to download the lat valid version from vault. Nasty.

If I want to edit a part then I want to check this part out explicitly. If I want to make a new copy of a part I can make a "save as" or use "save and replace component" f.e..

Thank you!

[dan_szymanski]

Accepted idea [503]. Thanks!

[Quickcola]

Wow! I am impressed. I posted this 1 year 4 days ago. They accepted the idea this morning. That's really fast, not! Well at least they finally got around to it. This will make Inventor a little less a pain to work with, thus a little better than it was. Although, it isn't implemented yet, the idea has simply got it's status changed to "Accepted" so I imagine it will one day be a reality. I might not ever see it though because after one whole year of working with Inventor, I switched back to a cad software that seems more concerned with user experience.

[Quickcola]

sorry, I misread. Previous post should say 1 year minus 2 days.