My company needs vault, but...

[Diequa]

We are a motion control distributor/assembly in Northern Illinois, all of our products are from Europe and right now it's hard to manage bill of materials, and we have a horrible part numbering system for custom componentry that really can't be changed unless it’s automated.  The worse of it all is everyone’s workstations are macs working from three systems, and no one can view solid models or view dwg's and just over all horrible to share drawings.

I really don’t have internals of a lot of the pieces we source from Europe but i do have part numbers, so would this be easy to make BOM's from?

What I need is some videos of vault, something that will get the owners wondering why the hell they have everyone working on a piece of fruit, i know we could boot camp windows, but no I don't want that because people here would get even more confused on how to switch between the three systems, we use filemaker, cubed, and connected, and being on boot camp would make us not move away from using mac.

So for the videos i need to see part number system, productivity increase, BOM, anything else that will obsolete our three system nightmare, and finally get the owners to realize macs are bad for this kind of business.

Thank you!

[Neil_Cross]

Hi Diequa, I think in the first instance you should probably approach a local reseller who specialise in the MFG (Manufacturing) product range, Silver/Gold/Platinum status, and ask to arrange a consultation with their team. I've worked in a reseller before and we routinely carry out design review consultations, we come in and review your procedures, identify your pain points, all free of course, and then give you guys a tailored product demonstration showing what Autodesk has to offer. Literally bring the products into your office, beam them onto a wall and do a live demo to yourself and anyone who needs to be impressed. I'd say that would be the best step. In the mean time, do a search for Autodesk demo tutorials. We created a Youtube channel for Symetri based in the UK and they've subsequently added many a lot more content to their channel, there are various Vault & Inventor functionality demos here: https://www.youtube.com/user/symetriuk/videos You can find various demo videos on BOM control in Vault there, as well as the other benefits it will bring. But nothing will beat the personal touch, go to http://www.autodesk.com/resellers/locate-a-reseller and find your nearest Vault & Inventor specialised reseller. Don't worry about not being perceived as a huge client or being too small to bother with, they should always give you 100% care & attention with the personal touch. Hope that helps.

[btillman]

We recently purchased a couple of seats for Vault to give it a try. And I'll do what I can to share with you what we have found. First off, Vault is an extremely impressive application with many uses. However, like anything new, there's not that much in the way of tutorials beyond the "Hello World" level to work with and those that do are based on totally unrelated setups than what we plan on doing with it. Second, Vault is very sensitive to the version of AutoCAD, Inventor etc...that you will be using to interface with it. The client will handle most tasks for you but without being able to open a drawing directly in AutoCAD most of your user base will have extreme difficulties in understanding how to use it. The training will of course be offered by your reseller but that can get very expensive, especially in the initial rollout when you're trying to make decisions on best practice to use for your specific setup.

I am confident that we will make good use of it as a document control app and other uses. But it does come with a large learning curve and the available materials on-line are limited at this time.

[Neil_Cross]

Agreed, there is limited resource online for learning Vault but speaking from experience... literally every single business in the world that use Vault will use it differently, with a different setup, it's extremely difficult to create a one-size-fits-all guide on how to fully understand Vault. But you've motivated me to try, so moving forward I'll be adding Vault related content to my Autodesk tailored Youtube tutorials which you can find here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7zEkelSRiHB1rOnspaBgQ Please let me know what areas of Vault are difficult to grasp and I'll set out to target those areas specifically. Having said that though... I'm conscious of coming across like a smarmy know-it-all but again speaking from experience, the last thing I recommend anyone does it try and get going with Vault without any certified & authorised guidance from a reseller. I've seen so many companies get themselves into a huge mess with Vault by trying to fudge their way through it, and individuals will also develop bad usage habits which ultimately causes problems. For example routinely dragging & dropping CAD files into Vault, a huge no-no but without guidance many don't understand why that shouldn't be done. So I guess going back to my original point, the investment in formal training will 100% be worth it in the long run as a clean-up operation on a knackered Vault & it's contents will cost a business a hell of a lot more than the training would!

[ryan]

If you login to Autodesk University Online there are actually some very good resources related to vault.  In particular, "CAD Manager's Guide to Autodesk Vault Family of Products".  Also, if I may be so bold, I'm also quite proud of the materials that Brian Schanen and I put together for our class a couple years back titled "Dogs and Cats Living Together" 😉  There are actually an abundance of resources out there, both documentation and videos so the ability to learn vault at a very deep level to implement it fully on your own is definately possible.  Of course, every company will implement vault differently so you have to take what you learn and apply it to your scenario.

I'm a regular on the newsgroup here and provide help whenever possible; however, if you are looking to partner up with a reseller to assist with your vault implementation, please feel free to reach out to me directly.   I've worked with Vault from BEFORE it was an Autodesk product so I'm extremely comfortable with every aspect of vault (we were a TrueInnovations reseller before the company was acquired by Autodesk).  As this is a peer-to-peer forum I certainly don't want to seem like my purpose in replying is simply to try and sell you services, in fact, I don't believe I've ever actually replied to a message in the past in this manner.  In fact, if you post a question on the forum if you "go it alone" and time allows me to reply, I will certainly do so.

-Ryan (rsmall@solidcad.ca)

[Neil_Cross]

---

@Ryan wrote:

In fact, if you post a question on the forum if you "go it alone" and time allows me to reply, I will certainly do so.

-Ryan (rsmall@solidcad.ca)

---

Don't worry Ryan, there are plenty of helpful people in the Vault community both willing and more than capable of providing answers to peoples questions.

[ryan]

Yes of course! I was simply suggesting that I wasn't trying to hijack the thread with a sales pitch when this is a community, one that I myself and many others contribute to of our own time.

Sent from my mobile device

Ryan Small, Technology Consultant
SolidCAD Solutions
1-877-438-2231 x110
2300 Steeles Avenue West, Suite 240
Vaughan, ON L4K 5X6

[Diequa]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I hope the owner realizes macs suck for our business.  Hopefully what I have gathered will convice him to finally switch everything over to Vault.

[connie_lennon]

Diequa -

My name is Connie Lennon and I am an Autodesk Territory Sales Executive with responsibility for Autodesk customers in WI and IL.  I have helped other customers such as yourself understand the value of Autodesk Vault to aid in design reuse, ability to find data quickly, and collaboration.  It sounds like you may have some of those same issues.

I have a technical expert that would be able to join me in helping your company.  If interested, please reach out to me directly at my email below and we can assist you in this process.

Connie.Lennon@autodesk.com

Thank you,

Connie

[The_Angry_Elf]

Darn it Connie, you beat me to the punch....;)

I was just about to suggest they contact us and we could help out....oh well, we all work together for the same goal, right?