That is normal for CC parts, at least for our team as well.
Because the Vault "Get" Open operation acquires all children when that is selected, we also have the notion that all CC files should be acquired then.... however, that is many times not true if we have CC parts in the assembly, and the CC content is located in Vault.
Typically, we just say YES TO ALL on questions regarding CC parts that still need to be acquired upon opening. This is very harmless as all CC parts are usually sitting released and will not be modified.
I am assuming you are performing an Open from Vault inside of Inventor. I am also assuming that your local workspace is clean and doesn't have the CC file.
Open from Vault assumes that you have the CC files because they rarely if ever change. Therefore, the Open from Vault command only gets the parent file and children that are not in a library, CC files.
That is why you see the prompt.
Exactly. Weird isn't it? Autodesk believes your CC is usually kept outside of Vault, but that makes no sense because we use Vault to store everything, keeping versioning control and backups. Why, if we store every other type of library in Vault, would we prefer having our CC managed in our local or network drive?
Most people, as far as I know (and others can drop a comment below) prefer to store their Content Center inside their Vault so they can wipe clean their workspace and not worry about components (styles/materials/appearance libraries are a different story). You are doing it right, don't worry. Someday Autodesk might change Vault's behavior, I hope, to avoid one more prompt of many when we open assemblies.
@Gabriel_Watson wrote:
Exactly. Weird isn't it? Autodesk believes your CC is usually kept outside of Vault, but that makes no sense because we use Vault to store everything, keeping versioning control and backups. Why, if we store every other type of library in Vault, would we prefer having our CC managed in our local or network drive?
Let me try to clarify our thoughts on CC files. CC files, along with all other files, must be kept inside of Vault when they are referenced by other files. If they are not, the parents that use them will have broken references in Vault. We don't want broken referenced files in Vault.
What we do think is that when CC files are created, a copy will always remain in the workspace because they are used frequently and there isn't a need to keep downloading them from Vault. For example, the same screw could be used across projects in many assemblies. Each time you start a new assembly and need to use the same screw, it shouldn't be necessary to recreate it from the CC library nor download it again from Vault. It saves time and performance if the CC file is already in the workspace.
I still disagree though that having Inventor assume the CC is already downloaded is the right approach. Especially if a Get operation has been executed in Vault, we assume it already checks for any local files to see what is missing and what is not. Overall, even with performance is best with keeping CC files, any files on local disk are dead space if 99% is not used often, and you can see how this assumption the software makes that things are local is never communicated with the user (we don't see there is such an exception and why anywhere, but if put to vote, I think everyone would disagree with this workflow).
The Get operation will only check for CC files if you select the option to download CC files.
As you stated, if the CC files are present in the workspace, the Get operation ignores those files. If the CC files are already present in the workspace, the Get operation is faster because it has to Get fewer files. This is what I was stating in my last response.
I agree, a high percentage of CC files are not used often but depending on the size of your workspace, leaving these files will take up a small percentage of overall space. Why not leave them?
"...you can see how this assumption the software makes that things are local is never communicated with the user."
If you uncheck the option above, the user is taking responsibility that the library files are already local or not needed. The software isn't making the assumption.
I think something in your project file setup is not correct.
If you have this option checked and you performed a Get with the libraries, all files that are not in your library folder will get downloaded and Inventor should find them without prompting you to download the CC parts.
Can you provide a video of this happening?
If we execute a "Get" in Vault or "Open from Vault" from within Inventor, the CC parts are showing up without the prompt to acquire them.
I could have sworn I saw this behavior also happening when larger assemblies are downloaded using "Get", but will have to wait and see the next time this happens. I would still defend the point that opening any content should by default download all child files, because an assembly's subcomponent being CC or not does not matter if the files are not found on disk. The very prompt asking to download CC parts that are missing could be avoided, unless we were being asked about regular child files as well.
Have you changed this option in Inventor?
In the Inventor Vault plugin that option is the same as shown there. I only change the one below that to "Never Prompt" for every user, but that's another story. Thank you for the suggestion.
