Vault implementation planning

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I am planning to implement vault into a test environment to replace windows explorer and further support Inventor. Our company currently uses Autocad, Revit, and Inventor for our design work. This would precede an implementation into a working environment for Inventor only, but with the possibility of further expansion to include ACAD and Revit.

For starters some background.

========= Background =========

I work at a consulting engineering company of 300 strong engineers, draftsmen and support personnel. Our company is split into 4 sections by discipline, energy, buildings, industry, and infrastructure. Each section is then split further into divisions. For example the section I work in (energy) is split into two mechanical divisions, an electrical section, a section of structural engineers, a hydrology division and one that focuses on construction in hydropower and geotechnical issues. This is also shown below.

Company

|

|------- Energy

|            |- Electrical

|            |- Mechanical (geothermal)

|            |- Mechanical (hydro)               <----- I work here

|            |- Construction & geotechnical

|            |- Hydrology & fluid dynamics

|            |- Structural

|

|------- Buildings

|

|------- Industry

|

|------- Infrastructure & utilities

Obviously, being a consulting firm our work is purely contract based. Therefore the setup of our file structure is set to segregate all data by contracts.

======´== Current Inventor setup =========

Up until recently all drawing work was done using Autocad. However Inventor is being implemented more and more for mechanical designs. As of a couple of months ago the standard Inventor parts library is stored on a network share. The same is true for style data as well as common drawing headers. This data is a standard company set as well as different implementations for different large clients.

========= File management =============

To give you an idea of our current file management layout i have drawn the following.

network share

|

|--------YY

|          |-YYnnn

|                   |- drawing-data <---- drawing data for all contracts

|                   |- Vnn    <---- contract

|          |-YYnnn

|          |-YYnnn

|

|---------YY

We have a project drive that hosts all project files, the drive is split into years, then years with a project number following. Under this folder multiple works pertaining to the same client location lives. Say we build something this year and the next free nnn number is 003, the project would become 17003, a contract folder Vnnn is then created. If a new contract for the same client and same location is done 20 years from now it will live in the same folder 17003, but under a new contract number. Currently a project is underway transferring all data except for drawing files to a file management system called M-files.

======== My thoughts =========

Initially i had planned on hosting all our Inventor data in Vault, as well as style data, drawing data and component libraries to enable central managent of these libraries. I had planned on having a seperate .ipj file for each YYnnn job so that custom drawing headers and custom symbols could be defined. However upon further reading i have learned that the most common (and recommended) implementation is to have a single .ipj file for you whole installation. While it is true that this facilitates re-use of components and design it also does not allow for any segregation between contracts.

I had also planned on seperate .ipj's because that would allow (i think) to point to the drawing data folder for each work set as the working folder for that .ipj in stead of hosting the documents on the Vault server itself.

======= What i need ==========

Primarily recommendations from Vault savvy people.

1. How would one go about this?

2. How would one plan for possible future integration of autocad and/or Revit data into the Vault?

3. Is the segregation of contracts allowing for only the correct drawing header to be visible to the designer/draftsman a pipedream?

4. Is hosting the data itself outside of the Vault server itself a nogo?

I hope someone finds the time to pitch in their $0.02 to help further clarify this for me.

Best reg.

Kristján Gerhard

Iceland

[ShayaGhanbar]

Hi Kristján,

To be honest with you, for a technical specialist who has experience in Vault implementation this would be a simple implementation. However, for yourself might be a more complex task to carry.

Since you are dealing with a data management system and you want to also have a plan in place that will support AutoCAD and Revit in the future, I would highly recommend speaking to a consultant or an Autodesk reseller.

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[Anonymous]

Hi ShayaGhan, thank you for taking the time to read and reply.

Since my post i had the IT dept. install the ADMS on a dedicated VM server for testing purposes. I have been tinkering a little and have come to the the conclusion that my original plan of attempting to keep the file stores independant on the network share as our file storage solution dictates is not feasible.

I think that I will come about in my recemendations to the higher ups and recommend that the test be continued, however that it be hosted within the vault and the file store hosted outside of the current network share.

If the results from the trial are positive I will also make the recommendation that a consultant be hired to assist in the implementation of Vault.

Another question: I know it is possible to extract properties from Autocad into Vault and I assume the same goes for Inventor and Revit. Is it possible to extract these properties to a third party application. I am thinking in the context of piping the information in drawing headers directly into our data management system for issued (released) drawings.

Kristján

[ShayaGhanbar]

Hi Kristján,

No problem, I am happy to help. Regarding your questions:

-As long as you have attributes in your AutoCAD files, you can link the attributes to Vault. Here is how you can do it:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/vault-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles...

-Inventor iProperties automatically get transferred to Vault. Basically, when you check in an Inventor file the iProperties come with it as well. If you have custom iProperties in Inventor, here is how you can map them to Vault:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/vault-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles...

-In the case of Revit, here is how it's done:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles...

Did you find this reply helpful?  If so, please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.