Easy way to open an assembly "read only"?

[jeanchile]

Is there an easy way to open and assembly (and everything referenced below it) as completely "read only"?

And, without Vault?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Inventor ships with Inventor ReadOnly mode. The product is free. You can open any Inventor file but editing and saving are blocked.

Many thanks!

[jeanchile]

OMG!

I totally forgot about Inventor Read-Only mode. Learned about that one in 2009 and promptly forgot it as well. Curtis Waguespack said reading his book would help. Not that I would remember everything.

[jeanchile]

Okay, that excitement was short lived.

What we're looking for is a way to open an assembly in Inventor, have all of the same tools for "investigating" the bill of materials, measurement, looking at sketches, maybe try different things, add parts, then close it, with no possibility of it ever saving anything, anywhere.

Is that possible somehow?

[swalton]

I'm not aware of a way to keep all dirty files from saving to disk.  Even Vault will let users save dirty files to the local workspace under some conditions.

Vault Pro, Lifecycle States, and Workspace sync will get you close.  As long as everyone understands that the true data is the locked version from Vault, not whatever is on any specific workstation/laptop.

Users would have to follow some basic rules:

• Only checkout files if the change is worth keeping. 
• Save to the local hard drive as necessary and overwrite the "known good" file. 
• Use the Workspace Sync and the Get-Force-Overwrite commands from Vault to clean out the random what-if files.

If Vault had the ability to branch/merge like Git or other source code tools, or just the ability to have several local workspaces on disk for each user like PTC Windchill, then design explorations without modifying the production models would be easy.

[swalton]

This post in the iLogic forum might be helpful...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-programming-ilogic/how-to-check-if-other-users-have-a-file-o...

Maybe tweak the code to set the READ-ONLY Windows file property, not just use a txt file to replace Vault?  It's much beyond my coding skills 😞

[jeanchile]

Yikes! Thank you, Steve. I was hoping for "AutoCAD simple" in a known not simple program.

I guess I also should mention that we don't, and have never used, Vault. That was because 15 years ago we had system that wouldn't permit another one of those type programs. We developed our process without it, and that has worked flawlessly for us fifteen years. I don't have a strong desire to throw that "monkey-wrench into the works", but if there's a strong influence in productivity, I'd consider it.

Thanks again for the input, and I'll go look for another tool elsewhere.

[swalton]

You might try the Legacy Project File settings..

https://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2025/ENU/?guid=GUID-FBA3E557-EB71-41DC-AB2F-8F794C1F2875

I've never used them. If I recall correctly, their usage was discouraged in the Inventor help file back when we started.  Inventor 9 or so? 

My first instinct would be to use Pack-N-Go to copy the production files to a secondary workspace and do my design exploration there.  Once I figured out how the design needed to change, I'd spin up a second instance of Inventor, scoped to the production project workspace and remodel.  If I knew exactly which files were altered, then I might copy them from the secondary workspace to the primary one.  I'd want the backup system to capture snapshots of the production at least twice a day, just in case I need to revert changes.

Users will have to be very aware of which workspace/project file they are using and which one is the known-good production source. 

Maybe each user could run some iLogic/VBA code that could set the open files to Read-Only before making any modifications?