Vault "New data available" warnings and iParts/iAssemblies

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I believe iPart/iAssemblies provide an essential role within Inventor and deserve a review. Some Inventor users rely heavily on iPart/iAssembly functionality, which also means that these models require regular updates. Just opening the factory and switching to a different member is seen as a modification that might lead to members being out of date. Even if there was an edit, (sometimes) not all factory changes effect all of the members. Currently, this means having to manually check out all of the members before being able to update them. Better support with respect to iParts/iAssemblies would be great, but forcing a checkout of all members isn't the solution.

The current workaround suggested by Autodesk is to place all of the generated components in a new file so everything can be updated at once. This is feasible for small iPart/iAssembly files with few variations, but not for larger assemblies having many different iParts/iAssemblies and respectively their members.

Instead, why not simply check out all of the children at the same time as the factory? You know they will need to be updated when the factory is altered, so why can't this be done automatically?

Not to mention that after regenerating all of the members of a factory, thousands of drawings inside the Vault now display a warning to anyone viewing the drawings that reads, "Warning, new data available". This warning has coworkers in different departments thinking that they are looking at "out of date" drawings, when they are not.

Let's say I've added a new "standard" part (new member) to a factory. The entire factory (all members) now need to be regenerated!?! Why? Nothing has changed, I've just added a new member and now thousands of drawings have a banner that reads, "Warning, new data available".

Can this member update be automated AND work together with Vault?

What about an automatic batch update process?

Also, we've often found that not all changes to the factory part will trigger inventor to actually consider the generated members to be out of date (requiring a save). Sometimes, when making a minor change (like adding an iMate) and generating new files, nothing happens. No new files are generated that show the change, regardless of being checked out or not. If I select generate files, it should generate the file. I should be able to see the time stamp of the file on the disk change to the current time and this does not happen in this case. It forces me to have to make a physical change to the factory (dirty the file) to trigger inventor and Vault to recognize that a change has been made.

Please correct these issues, as they are a major reason why Inventor software is so largely used.

Let's face it, the number one priority should be to create great products. The number two priority should be that the products can work together seamlessly.

Len