Using Autodesk 360 as vault server

[adrian.battiston]

I am a mechanical lead designer for McGill Robotics (McGill Robotics is an umbrella group of McGill university robotics design teams that compete at various international competitions) and I'm looking into trying to use Autodesk 360 as a vault server. Previously we used Inventor for our CAD along with Autodesk 360 to share files but we ran into issues when people would try to edit or open the same parts. I'd like to implement Vault Basic (which is included with the free student download of Inventor) to take care of file management issues but use Autodesk 360 as a cloud server for the vault. Is this possible? I found another thread that says it is:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-general-discussion/using-vault-with-autodesk-360-server/m-p/4615...

but the help files it directs to dont have any info on using autodesk 360 as a server. Likewise the only information included on setting up a server involves installing 'Internet Information Services' on the server, and using the Vault Server installer. I don't think it's possible to actually install anything through autodesk 360 and the Vault Server installer isn't included with the student downloads. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to use Autodesk 360 as a vault server or how to go about doing it?

Thanks,

Adrian Battiston

McGill Robotics - AUV Mechanical Lead

http://auv.mcgillrobotics.com/

[ryan · Accepted solution]

While you can open and save your Inventor files directly from/to Autodesk 360, you cannot install a Vault server onto it.  Perhaps this is a suitable option for you.

To install Vault Server you need administrative access to a "server".   You could however install Vault onto a VM running on a cloud server such as Amazon AWS or Windows Azure.  Obviously there would be a performance hit; however, you would have similar bottlenecks when working with Autodesk 360 as well since because you are transferring data over the WAN.  I did read however that Autodesk did not support Vault on a cloud-based server such as AWS or Windows Azure; however, I'm not the reason and I've used one myself (just in testing Windows Azure).

[adrian.battiston]

Thanks Ryan.

Am I correct in my understanding that when you say that Autodesk doesn't support Vault on a cloud based server, you mean that they dont provide technical support, but using Vault on a cloud based VM would work? i.e. you ran a vault server on Azure? Did it seem to work fine when you tried it?

My only concern with Autodesk 360 is that there is no method I know of to stop two people from editing the same file at the same time. Software like Vault would be an ideal way to have people check out and check in the CAD their working on while keeping track of the complex assembly dependencies. Unfortunately, being a student team we cant really afford to pay for a server (but I might look into sponsorship oppurtunities with Windows and Amazon, thanks for the tip!). On that note, Vault Client Basic is included in the free student package we can download, but I'm not sure about the server software. Do you have any idea if Autodesk will provide the server software to students?

Adrian Battiston

McGill Robotics - AUV Mechanical Lead

http://auv.mcgillrobotics.com/

[ryan]

Yes, I have personally tried Vault Server running on a Windows Azure VM.  Technically then it will work; however, Autodesk I do not believe will support this.

As for the software; http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/vault-basic