Does Vault work with third party AutoCAD extensions such as Thermal Desktop?

[PierceL]

Hello,

I'm currently assessing configuration management strategies for thermal models that my team creates with AutoCAD and Thermal Desktop. I was wondering if Autodesk Vault is capable of managing third party additions to the AutoCAD drawing file (*.dwg) the same way it does with native AutoCAD objects and properties.

Thanks!

[mikel_martin]

That depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

If you want to manage the file it is possible to add any file to the Vault manually.

If this is an AutoCAD vertical it is even possible that the Vault add-in will work with it.

If you want it to manage non-AutoCAD references or meta data not stored as attributes or file properties, it is possible to extend the system.

This would require some customization.

[PierceL]

Thermal Desktop saves its geometry and property data within AutoCAD's proprietary format (*.dwg), so that's what I'm trying to figure out if it sees. I know, for instance, that I can pull up a DWG reader and see the properties in the DWG database, so I'm wondering if Vault can see (and therefore track) those kind of changes. Would extensions to the DWG database require customization of Vault in order to track changes between revisions?

[mikel_martin]

It depends on the how the information is stored.

If it stored as block attibutes or file properties it may be possible to map Vault Properties so that the data is extracted and stored in Vault.