Combined Styles Library use

[tahdesign1]

I tried asking this in the Customization area with no responce so I will ask here where there is more traffic.

I am in the middle of an upgrade from 2009 to 2012 and have a styles use question. I am running three flavors of Inventor: Inventor, Inventor Professional, Inventor Factory (based on Pro).
The styles library that I am starting with was migrated from 2009 to 2012 and was running both IV series and Pro Seats. Although no real Pro functionality was ever used so any associated styles were still as delivered for the most part.
My working environment is a single Vault project setup where all the styles and libraries are local copies on each workstations drive. All the standard content (styles and libraries) stay checked out to myself on my machine for protection.

So here is what I did to make an all inclusive styles library that all flavors of products will use. Please pick this apart if you see something wrong with the method.

1) I started with the migrated styles library from 2009
2) As I installed the different flavors I copied the new styles libraries over the existing migrated one without allowing it to "overwrite" any existing styles files. This only populated the styles libraries with any thing I was missing from any of the flavors.
3) I use this combined library on all station regardless of the flavor installed. So some stations have styles on them that are not in use by the installed software.

[VinodBalasubramanian]

Hi,

I still couldn't get your query clearly on why Inventor flavours have control on your library settings. However this document below talks in detail about styles migration,

http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2011/05/style-library-migration.html

Hope it helps. Let me know, if the issue is different.

[tahdesign1]

Sorry but the question is rather simple.

I run three flavors of Inventor. I wish to have a style library that is used on all of my workstations that all flavors can use. I know that some stations will have style library areas that are not needed (regular IV does not need all the style areas pro does) but I wish to only manage one set of styles.

My view is that I would manage the styles on one of my Factory machines (this being the highest level of IV I am running) and that style library being able to run all lower flavors (Pro and regular).

[SBix26]

I'm not following, either.  What style areas does Pro have that non-Pro (Amateur?) doesn't?  I have Inventor Pro installed, but my Style library doesn't have anything in it that isn't also used by normal Inventor, as far as I can tell.  I can see that the Design Data folder has extra folders under it for Pro, such as Cable & Harness, Simulation, and Tube & Pipe, but these aren't part of the style library.  In my experience, normal Inventor just ignores these since it can't make any use of them.

[rjay75]

I think you're just asking for opinions on the method you've chosen. FWIW I manage the styles in the same way between Inventor and Inventor Pro. It makes sense since it seems that lower Inventor versions just ignore things it doesn't need.

[tahdesign1]

Yes that is exactly what I mean.

Lets put this in the view of an AutoCAD based products profile. The running profile for a seat of AutoCAD Mechanical is different from the profile that runs plain AutoCAD (Mechanical has more "stuff"). I can develop standard shared content at the higher level and it is fine for the lower level (plotting files, templates, etc).

So my view is that I can be in Factory Suite Ultimate (based on IV Pro). Develop all of my standards and they will all work for the lesser version of IV. Since I am using the single Vault project approach the Data and Styles directory is identical on all machines regardless of the IV flavor.

[SBix26]

Since there is nothing in the Style Manager that is not common across all flavors of Inventor, your proposal should work fine, but could be done in any of the flavors.