Cleaning up server, placing files, Vault or not?

[Niels__J]

Hi,

In the company I work for we're now 6 users of Inventor, and we're considering using Vault instead of an ordinary file server. The decision has not been taken yet, so I'm trying to clean up our file structure.

We only have one project file. We all run multiple project every day, so making a project file for each project would definitely result in carnage.

Templates, styles and materials are all placed on a server. So is the content center.
We've just upgraded to Inventor 24, and I've taken the files installed locally, and copied to the server where the project file points to. To me this seems not ideal, but at least I'm pretty sure that everybody are using the same materials etc.
However, I've noticed that the folder structure is a bit different, and I think it's turning into a mess (if it hasn't already).

I've tried to look for manuals about folders for workspace, labraries and design data, but I'm looking in the wrong places, or there are no manuals.

Some of the folders from the local installation differs from the ones we use on the shared network drive. And sometimes there's a language sub-folder and sometimes there's not.

For Materials and textures it looks as if the folder "textures" is missing in my local installation. Or at least it's not a direct subfolder to Materials, as it is in our shared network folder. Should it be, or doesn't it matter?

As for Workspace and Libraries.
We have a lot of parts from subsuppliers that we're not really supposed to make changes on. They are located in subfolders under the parent workspace folder, along with a subfolder that contains yet another subfolder for each project we're working on.
We have some subsupplier parts in the Content Center, but only a few, as most subsuppliers sends us part.STP/ISG .

Should we move all the subsuppliers into "Library" folder, and only have our own designs in the "Workspace" or doesn't it make any difference for performance?
(And if "move", how to do without using the Vault??)
Just re-checked: I don't even have the "Library" in my local installation of Inventor24, so is the folder on the shared network an obsolete thing of the past (Inv18 or so)??

In short: Can anyone point me in a direction to learn the best file structure of a shared drive (or how to sync local drives), to include workspace, own parts, subsupplier parts, materials/appearances, styles etc etc. ??

I hope it all made sense (or at least that some of it did )

Best regards,
Niels

Attached are to screen dumps of local and network Inventor folder/files.

[Cadmanto]

@Niels__J 

If you have Inventor Pro, there is the basic version of Vault included.  My suggestion would be to create an exclusive portion on your network drive and try it out for a month.  See if it does what you need it to do.

@Cadmanto - this post has been edited due to Community Rules & Etiquette violation.

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2021

[Frederick_Law]

If users need to work on same projects, Vault.

If all you need is share Library, CC, Template, setup sync from network.  So all users has the same Library files on local.

Vault is good at that also but it'll add overhead of check out, check in, release, quick change.

All the files can be under same folder or WorkSpace.

[Gabriel_Watson]

Styles, Materials, and Appearances are part of the Design Data folder, which can be in Vault (requiring manual sync, and recommended to be in a special lifecycle locked for only admins/libraries to change) or network drive (less safe but auto-sync, so keep backups of those in case someone overwrites files there).

Workspace Sync is a Vault tool to periodically compare and download libraries you would need locally. Often not necessary at all, as Content Center and other library folder parts will cause Inventor to ask the user to get/download those upon opening an assembly from Vault.

"Own parts" could be project-specific or taken as libraries (not in a Vault library type of folder, usually). If you have standard parts/components in a library, simply organize them into a regular folder close to the root folder in Vault, where you break down groups by having several folder layers (say, category of component, then types, then name). Project-specific could/should remain closer to the project folders (where applicable).

Subsupplier or vendor parts deserve their own library as the above, and should probably be split by vendor name. The way I've seen this done is usually top folders for each letter in the alphabet, then within each of those the individual folders for each vendor, then within those the folders for category of equipment, and so forth. It may be tempting to not organize by vendor, however, often companies may shut down or design rules change to avoid certain suppliers, which makes this structure superior to blending it all agnostically by type.

To clarify:
- Libraries in Vault are special folder categories that cannot be subfolders, and must sit close to the root. They also require different settings when you get the design content and wish to include library content to be downloaded together.
- Workspace in Vault is just the local folder that acts as "mirror" to Vault, and where you copy Vault content into, then modify local files there before uploading changes back into the server/Vault. It can/should be standardized for Vault, especially when the project file is already set to be the same for all users and projects.

[Niels__J]

Thank you for your replies and suggestions.

I'm not sure if I'm confusing you more or less than I'm confusing my self. I've made a tree of how our system is set up. Perhaps the location of the different folders are not very important, if only the project file points to their location, but I think the content of our IV18-folder is an absolute mess, and I'd like to purge all unused items, and put everything usefull in their right place.

[Niels__J]

With regards to the location of material- and appearance libraries.

Here's a snip from the project file:

---

  <PhysicalProteinLibraries>

    <ProteinLibrary>

      <Path></Path>

      <ProteinLibraryType>2</ProteinLibraryType>

      <ActiveProteinLibrary>0</ActiveProteinLibrary>

    </ProteinLibrary>

    <ProteinLibrary>

      <Path></Path>

      <ProteinLibraryType>3</ProteinLibraryType>

      <ActiveProteinLibrary>0</ActiveProteinLibrary>

    </ProteinLibrary>

  </PhysicalProteinLibraries>

---

When hovering the mouse in Inventor, the path to the libraries are:
AutoDesk Material Library – C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\4\PhysicalMaterial.adsklib
and
Inventor Material Library – J:\Tegningsdokumentation\IV18\Design Data\Materials\InventorMaterialLibrary.adsklib

Looking in that library it looks like I’m using a library from 2015…?

So I’m guessing I should either point the project file to the newest library file installed by Inventor 2024 (local C), or take that same file, and place on the server where the projetfile is looking.

I’m just baffled why the libraries are scattered all over the place – even on the local machine. Perhaps because some AutoDesk products uses the same file, but it’s still

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Materials\4
-vs-
 C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor 2024\Design Data\Materials

It sure ain't easy finding your way around!

By the way… looking in the Public Documents.
I was going to the delete the Texture folder in the IV18 folder, because there’s also a Texture folder within the Materials folder. However, from the recently installed Inv24, I can see that the Texture folder is at the same level as the Design Data folder (that contains the Materials folder)((see structure from my post 5minutes ago).
So now I’m mostly inclined to copy the folder structure from my local C-drive Inv24-installation onto the server, and then delete all other folders on the server.  

Apart for the obvious backup/trial/error answer, how does that sound?