Getting/Maintaining Locally Saved Content Center From Vault

[Anonymous]

My company recently installed Vault Basic, and we have multiple customized pieces of hardware and steel shapes saved to the vault (this is for use in Inventor Pro). I mainly work remote. Although I can sometimes use VPN to log into my company's server/vault, I cannot all the time and the reliability of the VPN connection is frustrating. I am in the office about once a week. I want to download our content center files onto my local machine, then occasionally update my local content center library for when other employees add new hardware/steel shapes. Our company's vault admin is out for the next month, and his backup does not know how to setup my machine to do these functions. After a bunch of searching, I hacked my way to be able to get the library to install locally, but I don't know if I did it the proper way. For the routine update, I don't know if there is a streamlined way, or if I need to go through the same method I went through to download the entire library.

My questions:

1) Is there a published process to download the content center library and files from the vault to a local machine (laptop)?

2) Is there a published process to routinely update the locally saved content center library and files from the vault?

3) After I complete my assemblies and save them to our server, what problems might I run into if my assemblies are made using hardware from my local content center (which the rest of the company will not have access to)?

Additional info... My role is new product development, and our current thought is all parts/assemblies I create will be saved to our network, but not added to the vault until the next internal group of engineers evaluates everything and adds the content to the vault. My procedure will be to utilize as much of our standard hardware/steel shapes/parts as possible while making new products. I am very new to Inventor and Vault, but have 20+ years of AutoCAD experience, so a "beginner's guide" to this process is what I need.

Thanks!

[CGBenner]

@Anonymous 

Hello!  I think I can address #1.  In your Inventor project there should be a button called the Library Transfer Guide.  This wizard will guide you through transferring either a local library to a Vault library, or vice versa.  This is how I downloaded my previous employer's content center when I was working at home.  See the image below.  What I never figured out, was how to successfully merge my new content back into the Vault library, or to incorporate changes made by co-workers.

For those parts of your question I think I will tag in @ihayesjr to see what insights he may have...  Good luck!

[ihayesjr]

These questions are more geared towards Inventor than Vault.

Vault may store the libraries but all of these are Inventor workflows not controlled by Vault.

[Anonymous]

@CGBenner  Thanks for the info. I attached an image of my first attempt at doing what you suggested. I had gone to our Vault and click "Get" for all of our content center files. For the life of me I couldn't understand why I could not see the files when in Inventor. I had changed all of the reference paths to the same folder where the content center files were saved, but still nothing. I went back to Vault and clicked on "Get" for everything I could. Even though I didn't see anything in the library folder within Vault, it was after I clicked "Get" on the library folder (which is separate from the content center folder) that I had success when going back to the window shown below. Like I mentioned, I now have the content center on my local machine, but the whole process seemed confusing. To me, simply clicking every button on the screen until it works is not a good solution. My search for "how to" procedures came up empty. I found plenty of people complaining of similar troubles, but no easy to follow procedure.

I want to provide a simple "critical work process" for our company on how to install the vault content center onto a local machine, and also include the important update process as well. I assumed there is such a procedure available online and I just had not found it after searching. Any help from the people on the forum is greatly appreciated. 

[CGBenner]

@Anonymous 

When you place a component from the Content Center or the first time, an actual part file is generated and placed in the correct folder in your Content Center location, based on Application Options.  These are the files that get checked into the Vault when you check in your designs.  Using "Get" on the Vault will only get you these generated part files, and as you found out,... slowly and painfully.  What it does not get you is the library database.

Here is an Autodesk Knowledge Network article describing how to use the Library Transfer Guide.  This is what will copy the actual library from Vault to Local, or Local to Vault.  What I have never found, is a way to do an incremental update in either direction.  From what I have seen, anything you publish to the CC while at home, will need to be re-published to the Vault database when you get back to the office.  The same is probably true for anything your co-workers are publishing while at home to their local Content libraries. 

I'm hopeful that someone has maybe found a workaround to this, or can prove me wrong.  😉

[mikejones]

Hi 

I run my own design company as a freelancer and one of my clients is using Vault basic as well. Sometimes I work on their projects from their office but mainly I work remotely from home. I can log in to their vault through a VPN access but I find it tends to slow inventor down so what I actually do is have two project files for this one company; a Vault one and a standalone one. Both reference the same folder locations for all files and CC files etc but the CC library databases are accessed differently i.e. one through vault and one via the desktop cc library. Both libraries are identical and all style library information is identical. What this means is I can work remotely using the standalone project file and then occasionally connect to the server through the VPN; or go to their office, and use inventor with the vault project file and check all files back into vault. It's normally a good opportunity to make a refresh of the CC files in the vault too. I would normally connect back up every couple of days to refresh all files etc but I find this works really well for me.

Mike

[Anonymous]

@CGBenner 

The link you provided is one I had seen during my searching. The problem is the library was listed as "Not Available", so the process laid out in the link would not work (it would give me a failure message when trying to transfer). Like you mentioned, I didn't get the library database. After going back to Vault and getting the library database, I could follow the steps laid out in the link. Me going back to Vault for the library was sheer desperation to "click every button" until something worked. I found nothing online that guided me to do the extra step I discovered.

Ultimately, it sounds like I stumbled onto the proper procedure on my own. Like I mentioned, I assumed there was a nice "how to" procedure that included the additional steps not mentioned in the link you provided.

Concerning incremental updates, I hope the button shown in the image I attached will work. I did click on it while logged out of the Vault and not on my company's VPN, yet it came back saying my library was up to date. Since my system was not connected to the vault, it had no way to investigate if the library was current or not. It left me not really trusting the reliability of the button. I appreciate your time.

[Anonymous]

@mikejones 

Mike - What you described is exactly what I am dealing with and wanted to setup on my system. The issue I ran into was me being new to both Inventor and Vault, I was looking for a "how to" to setup my system to operate that way. While searching (and speaking with a few people), I found multiple instances of people with the same desire, but nobody knew the process to get there. I guess I don't understand why there is not an all inclusive set of instructions to do such a thing.