Questions about a new Vault set-up

[mrattray]

I'm working towards moving my company to a Vaulted set-up for Inventor files. I have zero experience with Vault, so I obviously have some questions.

Some info: We currently have 5 designers. We're somewhere between an OEM and a job shop with standard designs that are always a little different, so being able to copy a design and edit it headache free is critical. It will be very rare that more than one of us ever touches the same project at the same time, but we'll likely be "borrowing" data from each others projects pretty frequently.  We'll likely be vaulting some non-CAD data (i.e. office and image files) if the option is available, but it's not a high priority.

1) Basic vs. WorkGroup vs. Pro: I found AutoDesk's break down of the differences... but found no meaning in it. Can anyone give me a quick overview of the real differences, the pros and cons, of the different packages? Prefereably without all of the marketing fluff and buzzwords. Opinions are welcome here.

2) My IT guy wants to save some money by using a dedicated workstation in place of a traditional server. Is there any reason I should tell him no? I'm not sure I really understand the difference.

3) Is there any sort of decent guide or advice out there for transferring a disaster of files into the Vault without making a mess of things?

4) I understand how project files work in the non-vaulted world, but how do they behave with Vault?

5) How do different versions (i.e. 2013 vs. 2014) of Vault behave with Inventor? Do the versions have to match, or can 2014 Vault handle 2013 Inventor? Can 2013 handle 2014 (I assume no)? We're still on 2013 Inventor now, but plan to upgrade in the near future.

I'm sure this is at least the hundredth time these sort of questions have been asked, but I'm having a hard time finding good up to date info. I'm likely too ignorant to know the right key words to search for.

I appreciate any help or advice you can give.

[paul.gunn · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Some information on question (2): workstation OS is limited to number of HTTP connections it can service [I believe the limit is 10 concurrent for most workstation versions]. Whereas the server OS has no such limitations. Depending on your number of users at peak load, this limitation could degrade performance.

On question (1) here's a [hopefully simple] view:

Basic has general folder / file version control

Workgroup adds revision, lifecycle control, and per-object security .

Professional adds items, change orders, and replication

Hope this helps,

Paul

[mrattray]

Thanks for the response, Paul.

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@paul.gunn wrote:

Some information on question (2): workstation OS is limited to number of HTTP connections it can service [I believe the limit is 10 concurrent for most workstation versions]. Whereas the server OS has no such limitations. Depending on your number of users at peak load, this limitation could degrade performance.

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Does this mean that if we go with a workstation that we'll be limited to ~10 designers in our engineering group? Or does it mean that if more than a couple of designers are trying to access data at a time that slow downs can occur? Currently we only have 5 designers. I imagine the machine would be outdated before we see 10 designers, but I don't like lag.

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@paul.gunn wrote:

On question (1) here's a [hopefully simple] view:

Basic has general folder / file version control

Workgroup adds revision, lifecycle control, and per-object security .

Professional adds items, change orders, and replication

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I don't understand what any of these feature names really mean to me. For example: to me file version control, revision, lifecycle control, and change orders are all the same thing. What's the difference? What is replication? What are items? What is per-object security?

Thank you for your patience with what is likely very elementary questions.

[DarrenP]

don't know if you been here: http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Vault/enu/Help/Help/0001-About_Va1/0002-Vault_Ar2

but this has a lot of info

[mrattray]

I've been picking through there all afternoon. There is a lot of info, but I'm having a had time finding what I need there.

[swalton · Accepted solution]

Here is my quick and dirty understanding:

You need Vault Pro if you:

       Want to have Inventor pass BOM data back and forth to a corporate ERP system. (Items)

       Want to host design data at several different offices in different citys. (replication)

       Want to track ECO/ECR with the Vault.  (Change Orders, notification of lifecycle changes)

You need Vault Workgroup if you:

       Want to assign lifecycles to Inventor files (work-in-progress, under review, production, obsolete) and have Vault manage who can edit/see files in each stage. 

       Wamt Vault to assign Revision numbers to files and track which assembly revision level uses which sub-component revison level.

       Want automatic file names

You need Vault Basic if you:

     Want to have Copy Design

     Wamt to have centralised backup for all design data

We have had good luck using a single project file for all of our Inventor work.  That may or may not work for you.  You will want to use the autoloader to check the files as you load them. You can also set up a temp vault and load your messy data there.  Then you can move and rename files as required.  Once everything is haw you like it, pull everything out into a clean workspace and use autoloader to move it into a new production vault.

[paul.gunn · Accepted solution]

Hi,

The connection limit doesn't affect the total number of users - just the number that can connect at one time. So it sounds like this depends on how quickly you expect your team to grow, etc.

The wiki is a pretty good source, but there is a lot of information there. Here's an attempt to summarize some of the features you asked about:

 file version control, revision, lifecycle control, and change orders are somewhat related. Revisions and lifecycles are a more stuctured way of managing the files throughout the product release cycle. e.g. you can see what files are 'released' or 'in progress' and get files released for a particular revision (e.g. 1.1) - which correlates to some version you may have released your product as. Change orders are a structured way driving the lifecycle states - with approvers, email notifications, etc.

Replication: ability to have multiple server machines (e.g. worldwide) that share all data between each other. For distributed engineering / development

Items: provide ability to manage BOM and integrate with ERP systems.

Per-object security: you can say what users have read, write, and delete access to the files and folders. This also ties into lifecycle as files in different states (e.g. released) can be configured to automatically get different permissions.

Hope this gives you a starting point for thinking about these features, anyways.

Paul

[paul.gunn]

One more thing on question (5):

Vault supports client apps (e.g. CAD) up to 2 releases back. So inventor 2013 should be fine with vault 2014. The reverse is not true however.

Paul

[mrattray]

Thank you Paul and swalton. Your answers are very helpful.
The only question I still have is #4. I'm assuming that once your vaulted, the file reference solving responsibilities of the project file are taken over by the vault. So what then, is the purpose of the project file once one has made the move to Vault?

[swalton]

Inventor still uses a project file as normal, Vault just shares it. 

Vault copies the file structure of your data on your local hard drive when you check-in files. That is why you want to get everything structured correctly before your initial check-in to your production vault.

You can acutually use several different project files in a single vault database if you want.