Temporary Project Files confuse Inventor

[loesche1]

Hi all!

We're working with Vault Pro 2015 and Inventor 2013.

During the use of the Vault Client function 'View in Window' on files that don't have a visualization attachment, the Inventor View is opened and in the local TEMP folder the related documents are copied to. There is also a copy of the IPJ project file placed in this TEMP folder.

Now we got the situation that this temporary copies of the project file are somehow remembered by Inventor. When starting Inventor the next time there is a message coming up that this projects can't be found. The bad thing is that the active project is changed to 'Default' and not to our default Vault/Inventor project file.

Has anyone experiences how to deal with that issue?

Regards,

Lars

[Neil_Cross]

Yep all the time, my office has 100+ Inventor users and it was a regular thing.  Because it's near impossible to make it happen on demand (unless you're saying this is happening every time?) Autodesk chose not to address it, as it's not the end of the world and would be a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I got sick to the teeth of users complaining to me they couldn't open from Vault, Vault is broken, Inventor is broke, but it was just their IPJ being reset to Default.  It happened every day to random people.  Drove me nuts.  So what I did was go into the Inventor application options and forced their Inventor to load a new IPT on startup which in turn lets you set the IPJ to the Vault one:

So essentially, whenever Inventor starts up, it will go directly to making a new file and set that IPJ as active.  This annoyed the users because Inventor took a little longer to open up, but zero f**ks were given by me as I was annoyed at them being unable to figure out their Inventor was using the default.ipj

You can then embed these application options into your deployment image so when installed, you annoy ALL users.  This makes me happy. 

Other than doing that, there's not a lot else you can do about it.

[smilinger]

I think we can just right click the Inventor shortcut on Desktop or in Start Menu, select Properties, select the Shortcut tab and change the Target to:

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2015\Bin\Inventor.exe" /pf"D:\_Vault\Projects.ipj"

Just change the ipj file path to any ipj file you need and deploy the shortcut to everyone's desktop and startmenu.

[Neil_Cross]

I actually didn't realise we can force a project file via a shortcut, I vividly remember asking Product Support this question a few years ago and was told no it can't be done, so personally I left it there.

I'm not sure how the shortcut method interacts with the TEMP folder issue though, but it's definitely a better method than my suggestion.  It's also worth considering how service packs affect this as I think they may reset shortcuts.  Good suggestion tho!

Edit: http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2011/11/set-and-lock-inventor-project.html

Although there's no mention there of the /pf switch, the suggestion is there.

[Neil_Cross]

I gave you a shout out in this tutorial, cheers 

How to set/force an IPJ project file on open | Autodesk Inventor

[smilinger]

Good tutorial, I like it.

[loesche1]

Thank you all for your input!

We're now using different workarounds

- open Inventor by double-click on project file in Vault

- Desktop-Shortcut referencing the project file

- start action new from template in Inventor

    * with opening a new document

    * without openening a new document

It is all working, but I feel that this is only fighting the symptoms and not a real prevention.

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I just want to follow up about this situation.

Is there available any fix for this issue? I'm running AI 2016 with Vault Basic 2016 and it randomly creates those temporary ipj files in a TEMP folder of my C: drive. I don't usually open Parts or Assemblies form Vault client but sometimes I used the "View in Windows" function.

Thanks in advance for your advice

HE

[smilinger]

I think that is unavoidable. Vault downloads the files to the temp folder instead of your working folder in case you are viewing an old version file and not overwriting the files in your working folder which may have been saved and not yet checked in.

[gilsdorf_e]

The problem with custom shortcut is, that it is reset to default with each Inventor update. I you don't keep that in mind when distributing software, you will run into the same problem again.

I wrote an Inventor addin that will check if the project file is the correct one on each Inventor startup and file open event and will set it to the correct one, if not.

[S.Janowicz]

An Addin sounds like a brilliant solution. Is there any chance you are willing to share this with the rest of us? It would help me very much to have this functionality.