pdf creation for items

[Dominik.Janshoff]

Hello Everyone,

At the moment my vault is data centric (Vault Pro 2023.2). The creation of a pdf during release process of the drawing works fine with the job processor.

Now I started to configure Items. Sometimes I have an issue with automatic assignment of the pdf to the item. I have Items where the pdf is assigned automatically, when I Refresh/Update an item (I have items with pdfs and I cannot remember, that I assigned the manually). Then the Part, the drawing and the pdf is assigned to the item. Sometimes the vault creates a new Item and only the pdf is assigned. At the moment I have no clue why this happens.

I have a release process for the data and one for the items.

Now I have the idea to create the pdf during item life cycle change. I changed the action of the lifecycle of the Item.

But no pdf is created with the job processor after lifecycle change. No job is in the queue.

Now my questions. What is the best practices to create pdf when I work with Items?

Create the pdf with the release process of the drawing and Update the item?

Or

It is possible to create a pdf with the release process of the item?

Has any one an idea why the pdf is not automatically assigned to the items during update? A hint would be great, where I can start my search for a solution.

Thank you in advance for your Help!

Dominik

[ihayesjr · Accepted solution]

@Dominik.Janshoff 

Automatic PDF creation for 2D files is only created during a File Lifecycle transition. PDFs will not be created during an Item Lifecycle transition.

PDFs will not automatically be assigned to the same Item as the IDW or DWG. You have to manually attach them to the Item.

If you selected the PDF file during the Assign Item process, the PDF would get assigned to its own Item.

[jorgen.bjornes]

There are some third party solutions that supports this.

In my previous job at a reseller (https://www.nti.biz/) we had some excellent job processor tools that supports exactly what you are asking for  (NTI vault publish for creating secondary files during item LC change, NTI Item export to add secondary files like pdf to Item BOM during Item release process).

NTI are pretty much all over Europe now, so you could talk to them to find out more. Other resellers may have similar tools, but I was impressed with how NTI supports pure Item lifecycles pretty nice.

[Dominik.Janshoff]

Thank you for your answers.

@jorgen.bjornes  Actually I have access to the nti Tools and contact to one of the nti companies.. But for me it is important to know what is possible with the build in functions.

[jorgen.bjornes]

yeah.. For job processor, Autodesk have almost exclusively focused on file lifecycle..