Vault & IV Projects

[cbenner]

Hello,

I need advice.  Years ago when my company was using Vault (first version) for nothing more than check out/check in, they established several Inventor projects.  One relationship that was created was a group of parts were placed into a read only library project, and then vaulted as a library.  The drawings for these parts were put into a separate project, and vaulted as such... this one is not a library folder.

Now we have Vault Pro 2011 and are working toward implementing its full document management capabilities, ECO and such.  Up to now when checking in files, local copies were left in the working folders.  Now that I am trying to check in and delete local copies, the relationship between these parts and drawings is being interrupted due to thier being in separate projects.  If I open from the vault, one of these drawings, I get the message that not all documents were found and I of course get the question marks in my model tree.  I can use "get revision" and retrieve everything to the working folder, then close the drawing and reopen it and resolve the links... but I don't want to have to do that everytime I open form the vault.

I would, ideally, like to get hese all under one project, and I don't really care if it is a library folder or not.  How can I merge these files so the relationships are maintained?  Do I need to delete one or both of the folders from vault, and set it up fresh? 

[mikel_martin · Accepted solution]

It is possible to considate your project files into one. However, it can be tricky. I suggest you backup your data before attempting it.

One key thing about doing this though is that the project library paths have the same names as the exising libary paths.

If you have projecta.ipj which has a libary path called MyLib with a path to some folder, and projectb.ipj has a libary path called YourLib with a path. You would need to create a project file with two libary paths; MyLib and YourLib.

Then create the workspace mapping so that all of the other workspaces fall under its search cone.

Once you have done this and tested that it works from within Inventor, you will want to remove your extra project files from the Vault or upgrade to 2012.

In Vault 2011 (and earlier) when you do an open operation from inside Vault Explorer, the application would walk up the directory tree looking for a "correct" project file. Once a project file is found it is set in Inventor. This can be a problem if you have mulitple project files if you are not carefull about where the project files are placed.

In Vault 2012 the user (or the admin) can set a project file as the project file to be used for all Vault operations.

Hope this helps,