Sharing same local work space for Vault Workgroup and Inventor

[Anonymous]

In an effort to become more organized I've attempted to map my Vault projects in Workgroup to the same local location as my local vault projects via the Inventor.exe application. 

It seems to me that if Inventor.exe is open, i cannot open a file from the Vault Workgroup application as it will attempt to overwrite my local .ipj with that inside the vault. If I then close inventor.exe, the parts are loaded successfully.

To me the act of merging locations between the Inventor.exe application and the Vault Workgroup application seems intuitive, reduces file space, reduces hassle involved when using "save-copy-as" as the workspace location is constant between applications. I've even done minor testing with other users and they don't seem to have issues.

My question is more trying to understand how the .ipj works and if it is a "smart" idea to map both applications workspace upon each other or am I going to run into some issues down the line. I'm surprised the default between these two applications isn't to act this way so I must be missing something. 

Am I correct to assume the .ipj stores file path information "relative" to where the .ipj itself is located? I've also noted that locally there are .ipj's in the Vault Workgroup default project directory as well as within the immediate project folders as well. This behavior seems odd.

[swalton]

I am really confused about what you are trying to do.  

What is the difference between the Vault Workgroup projects and the "local vault" projects?  

Why should they be in the same directory structure? Presumably, designs that need to be controlled by Vault Workgroup are in a different directory structure than things that don't need to be controlled by Vault Workgroup.  If you intermix them, how do you know if you need to activate a Vault project file or a "normal" project file before you open an assembly?

[Frederick_Law]

If you use the Vault Project, you can still work on local only files.

As long as you don't check those files into Vault, they're local only.

Using a non-Vault Project in Vault location is dangerous.  User could modify Vault files without check out.

[Anonymous]

What I noticed was that depending which application I opened a vault part from (Inventor.exe vs Connectivity.VaultWkg.exe) the location in which the part was saved on my computer locally would be different. I like to sometimes have both applications open so I can see what is/is not checked out, see assembly dependencies, etc.

I just figured I could save disk space (even if just on a temporary basis) by making:

Workgroup>"Project Explorer ($)/someproject">rightclic>change

the same location as:

Inventor>projects>new>new Vault Project>Project (Workspace) Folder

To me this makes sense as why would you want to have the same file saved at two locations. I supposed it doesn't matter where you save things if you religiously check them into the vault as I do, but I've been using this for a while and haven't had much issues except noticed that it seemingly overwrites my ipj file with one from the vault so I was curious more about how ipj files are used and transferred among users in inventor.

[swalton]

I haven't seen the behavior you are describing.

I have a single directory at the root of my C: drive as shown below.  I use the .ipj file in this directory for all my Vaulted Inventor projects.  The Inventor files are stored in the Workspace directory. 

Here is the Vault working folder setting for my vault.

The working folder and .ipj file set in Vault match the Windows Explorer screenshot, above.

If I am doing work that will not be checked into Vault, I create a new .ipj on my file server.  I store the various Inventor files on that machine, not on my local workstation.  I change ipj files in Inventor when I switch between Vault and non-Vault work.