Checking in non vaulted assembly

[CAD-One]

From a network archive I copy a old folder of many parts/drawings/assemblies to my working folder. Its quite possible that a few of these files are already vaulted by another engineer( could be because its a common part across projects).I would like the inventor to refer to vault when there is one vaulted.

For our discussion here, lets say I copied a network folder of files to Working folder. It consisted of Assembly-A made up of Part1, Part2 and Part3. PArt1 & Part2 are already in vault, but the Part3 & Assembly-A is not in vault. When I open the Assembly file, how can I have the Inventor use the Part1 & Part2 from vault instead of the ones in the working folder. I thought Inventor prompted to download a file if it was already in vault.

I hope I havent confused you guys. I have tried to explain my problem. Is there a solution for this?

[alan_ho]

Hi C1,

Not sure if I understand your problem fully. I'm interpreting two questions in your post.

1. Why is Inventor not prompting to download a file from Vault for resolution?
2. How can I use parts that are already been vaulted.

To answer question 1, Inventor prompts to download and resolve file(s) from the vault when it is not able to resolve the files locally.

For question 2: in a nutshell, the Inventor Vault add-in recognizes the Inventor objects by the target folder in the Vault.

The base of this target location is determined by your project file and the folder mapping in Vault. So if the files that you have opened in Inventor are already resident in vault, they will be reflected in your vault browser.

[CAD-One]

Alan,

Thanks for the response. But, I am little lost here.

You said...."To answer question 1, Inventor prompts to download and resolve file(s) from the vault when it is not able to resolve the files locally."

I dont see this happen. I have a large assembly i copied from our network folder. This assemblies is made up of many sub assemblies and parts. I am pretty sure 75% of the parts are in vault.

All I have done is, copy only the top assembly that isnt in the vault to the working folder and try to open it. I was expecting the vault to prompt to download the parts from vault to open the assembly.

If the assembly opnned up successfully, I was planning on checking it into the vault.

[CAD-One]

Guys,

I was wondering if anyone else had some kind of solution for this. Please share.

Thanks

C1

[JamesMcMullen]

Hello C1,

I hope I understand your problem correctly.  Does your assembly open?  I would expect the assembly to open and when you select the Vault option from the navigation tree there should be status icons stating that the files have been edited out of turn (yellow icon, if I recall).  Are the sub-assemblies inside the Vault?  If so, are all their parts in the vault as well?  I am unsure if this is possible or not, but try a get latest from Vault on the main assembly and it should retrieve the files from the vault and overwrite what is local.  Please note that if the sub-assemblies have additional parts in the Vault, those parts will be lost when you do they get latest operation.  Again, I haven't tested this out and you would probably want to do this on a small sub-assembly.  What I have validated was taking a small assembly and makes several changes to it inside the vault and over wrote the local directory with the original changes.  When I opened it up inside Inventor and logged into the Vault, I was able to see the icons that the files I changed were "edited out of turn".  At this point, I was able to pull the vault results back down locally by performing a get latest from the vault.  It will prompt you saying that the data local is newer than the data inside the vault and you can select yes to grab the data from the vault or no to keep your data local. 

-Jim 

[CAD-One]

Jim,

I really appreciate you taking so much interest in resolving this issue for me. I did try exactly, but it didn't resolve.

Here is what I did :

1. I copied a assembly file from a old network folder to my working folder. After that I detatched the network drive (to be sure).

2. Opened it. Inventor couldn't find parts for that assembly & bring up a file resolve window. I hit skip...skip all.

3. I switch to the vault browser (Little pull down over the feature bowser) and see that all the files carry a blue plus, meaning not in vault.

4. I go to the VC and search for the a part (listed in that open assembly). The search will find the result. I right click and GET the file.

5. At this point of time, in inventor, I right click the top of the assembly icon in the browser and click resolve. At this time, inventor successfully resolves that specific part file.

6. I would need to do this to each and every part/sub assembly file.

Very tedious to do this. Am I doing anything wrong?

I have checked to see if the project file is set right & it is.

Please guide me if can check anything else.

Thanks

C1

[JamesMcMullen]

Is this assembly contained within a certain part of your vault?  If the area is small enough, I would suggest doing a get entire folder on the area in question.  That will pull everything down (even things you don't want).  But, it will allow you to resolve the assembly quicker.  When you did the search for the files that are not local (your step#3) are there any sub-assemblies missing?  Because that would make things easier on you since you can do a get on the entire sub-assembly which would resolve a good chunk of your files depending on how high up in the assembly it resides.  Your approach was a valid approach but as you mention it will be very time consuming.  Hopefully what I suggested above helps you out.

-Jim

[CAD-One]

Jim,

Thanks for the tip. I will try doing this. I am working with my VAR also.

By the way, you have understood my steps perfect, except that the assembly for which I am trying resolve with parts from vault is NEVER checkedin. This would be the first time, I will be checking it in.

I will try the sub assemblies first & resolve it. Later will download the entire parts folder to my working folder. Unfortunately the assembly & parts aren't in the same folder (company practice).

This assembly might have around 50-60 parts.... at some irregular folder pattern in vault. Looks like, I have to get the complete Parts folder to my working directory (All 18000 parts 😞  )

Wished it was better. But looks like, this is only choice. 😞

Thanks

C1

[JamesMcMullen]

I wouldn't download the 18000 parts from the vault.  I was hoping that the target area would be much smaller.  Hopefully your VAR can help you out.  At this point, short of using the API somehow grab the files you need from the Vault, I am not sure there is much I can offer in terms of suggestions

-Jim

[CAD-One]

Is this something I can start a support ticket with Autodesk Support. Can some from support team take a look officially?

Will this help at all? Or its the same as VAR.

[JamesMcMullen]

Unsure if this would really fall into a support case but it might be worth a shot.  But, I did think of something.  Is it possible for you to attempt to check-in the assembly (in essence an add) without trying to pull down the files from the vault?  I would expect that you would get something stating that the files are out of sync or something along that line.  This might speed up the process of getting everything back in sync.

[CAD-One]

You mean .. VC->file menu-> add files?

Do the above even without trying to open the aseembly file in inventor?

[JamesMcMullen]

No, I am saying open the assembly up within Inventor even though we already know that some of the files are out of sync. When you try a check-in operation (do not complete the operation but just get to the one dialog) you will see a dialog that has a bunch of files that are marked for check-in and some that are un-checked (this is my hope).  Let me know what you are seeing on that dialog and from there we might be able to do something to allow you to check the entire thing into the vault.

-Jim