IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog

Vault 2010 Service Pack 1

Autodesk has released service pack 1 for Vault 2010. This service pack is for any “flavour” of the Vault including Vault Workgroup, Collaboration, and Manufacturing.

So what’s in it?

Mostly it’s a collection of all the hotfixes released for the 2010 Vault product family and you’ll need this service pack before you will be able to install any future hotfixes.

A couple of the new issues addressed include fixes for an issue when running Vault on Windows Server 2008, an issue with blank entries when extracting properties, and an issue of licenses not being released properly. As always check out the service pack readme for all details including installation instructions.

This service pack also reintroduces the file lock icon that was present in 2009 but it not behaves slightly different.

Anything of note?

If you do apply the service pack it needs to be applied to the server and ALL clients. Also remember that it is ALWAYS a good idea to ensure you have a backup prior to applying any hotfix or service pack.

The Inventor Subscription Bonus pack and / or Inventor Service Pack 1 need to be installed prior to installing Vault 2010 Service Pack 1

When you extract it you’ll find multiple .msp files to install… one for the server, one for the client, and two more for Inventor (one for the subscription bonus pack and one for service pack 1… when you see them it’ll make sense)

Where can I get it?

You can find the service pack here

Using AutoCAD and AutoCAD Mechanical with Vault

Thanks to Michael Thomas again for another great blog post on the Vault line of products.  Without further ado...

We had a gentlemen phone in the other day looking for something to help him manage his AutoCAD drawings and the hundreds of images he is using.  The first thought…. what about Vault?

Many people associate Vault with Inventor and perhaps even with Civil 3D, but forget about AutoCAD. I think this has to do with Autodesk’s marketing and positioning of the Vault product line but the truth is that Vault is very well integrated into AutoCAD.

One of the strengths of Vault is how well it manages files and file references.  This is very true with the Vault and AutoCAD data as Vault will manage any of the external reference attachments that AutoCAD uses.  This includes XREFS (DWG), raster Images (like .bmp, .jpg, etc), DWF underlay, DGN underlay, and the new 2010 option for PDF underlay.

So what’s in it for you to use Vault with your AutoCAD?  Here are a few reasons.

1. Check-in / Check-out:  This helps stop inadvertent changes as you are prompted to check out the file before you are allowed to make changes and save the file.  If someone else is working on the file you will not be able to make changes until they have completed their changes have checked the file back into the Vault.  You will also know who is working on the files.
2. Where Used:  Pick on a file within Vault and instantly see each and every location that file is used
3. Reference Management:  Move or rename drawings, images, pdfs, and any other attachments and the Vault will automatically correct all references where that file is used
4. DWF Visualization:  As an AutoCAD drawing is checked into the Vault it can automatically generate a DWF which can be viewed within the Vault client without having to use AutoCAD or some other CAD product.
5. Searching:  Vault uses a SQL database to store meta data (title, subject, author, part number, etc) and as it is SQL based searches are extremely quick making it easier to find files and reuse designs.

Here are a couple shots of an AutoCAD drawing being checked into the Vault.  Notice how it automatically detects all attachments, even the nested attachments, and checks in the entire collection into the Vault.

Once checked into the Vault neither the drawing nor any of the attachments can be modified as they will be set to read-only until checked out.

Files stored in the Vault can also be directly attached to a file right from within AutoCAD, including a find option. The find function is Vault wide and extremely quick meaning if it’s in the Vault you will find it.

When checked back into the Vault a DWF is also created for others to view

Once stored in the Vault you can use the Vault Explorer to view information about the files like “uses” information to see which files are attached to a drawing and “where used” information so you can see EVERY single place a drawing, image, or underlay is used within the Vault. So if you’re considering changing something why not check what the change will impact first?

Renaming a file within Vault auto-corrects the reference in each file it is used… that’s right I said automatically so if you rename something or move it there are no worries about your drawing not finding the references in the future. An extremely powerful tool!

In the images below the file “FoundationDetail_16b.tif” was renamed to “FDetail.tif” using the Vault Explorer. When the main drawing is reopened in AutoCAD there is no prompting or repathing as the AutoCAD drawing is already aware of the changes.

What about some of the other AutoCAD based products? Outside of AutoCAD LT (which has no Vault support) any of the AutoCAD “flavored” products can use Vault (for example AutoCAD Electrical, AutoCAD Mechanical). Some have their own additional integration with the Vault

For example… AutoCAD Mechanical has the extra bonus that AutoCAD Mechanical structure components and part references that are used to build the AutoCAD Mechanical Bill of Material (BOM) and Parts List integrate completely with Vault Manufacturing and its item master.  Although you have a single AutoCAD drawing Vault Manufacturing can extract the BOM components.

The following image shows an AutoCAD Mechanical Parts List.  This was built using the data of the drawings part references and structure components.  Notice how Vault Manufacturing can extract this information from the single AutoCAD Mechanical drawing and build the corresponding items.

Wrapping up, the issue for the gentleman considering Vault to help manage his AutoCAD and raster data is not really about using Vault but what is the best approach to get it.  Vault is included with AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD Electrical, Civil 3D, and the Inventor suite of Products…. not AutoCAD.   It’ll probably be the easiest for him to upgrade to AutoCAD Mechanical (and if he chooses run it as a “vanilla” AutoCAD) which will not lose any functionality that he currently uses and will even allow him to continue using his Raster Design.

If you are considering Vault don’t forget about your AutoCAD data.  If you are using AutoCAD or some flavor of AutoCAD why not take a look at Vault to manage that data for you.  And remember IMAGINiT is always available to assist.

Dropbox: Change the Way You Access Your Data

It has happened to me on more than one occasion.  I get up bright and early and pat my boys on the head and send them off to school.  Kiss my wife and off to work I go.  I set up my laptop, pour my first cup of coffee.  Check my iPod for any fan mail from the blog or Facebook comments about last night's adventures.  Then it happens.  I reach into my bag for my flash drive and its not there!  I hunt around feverishly inside neoprene and other fiber I can't discern, searching deep into the nether regions of my personal portable computer storage container of livelihood.  Then the Blackberry goes off and its a text message from my wife.  "Did you need your Sandisk 8GB Titanium Flash receptacle thingy?"  Now my wife's technical vocabulary was enhanced in that last sentence.  Usually I get "thingy" as all the descriptor.  I had an ace up my sleeve just for this sort of problem.  Now it was time to put her technical ineptitude to the test.

Two weeks before I installed Dropbox onto all of my home and work computers.  I had heard whispers of this from my other tech friends before, but never really saw the need to grab an account and try it out until my wife started asking me for all my music and Christmas Card lists that were on my work computer she could not access especially since I travel quite a bit.

Dropbox works like an online Uber flash drive.  That's right, I said Uber, don't judge me.  To start out you get 2GB of free online storage that is expandable to 5GB after enough referrals.  There are also pay plans for you video junkies and audiophiles that need extra space.

The Dropbox can be installed on any PC or Mac and even the iPod and iPhone now.  Whatever is added to the Dropbox is synchronized across all Dropbox locations as long as they are online.  Furthermore, I can share files with direct links to the location to anyone in the inter-webs.  All I have to do is Crtl+Right Click on a file and choose the Copy Link Location right from my Dropbox and paste it into an email.

Well, Mr. Tech Trend smarty pants blogger, what if my computer takes a download over the side of a cliff with all my other computers daisy-chained with Serial cables.  Now I have nothing right?  Wrong.  You can log into your Dropbox from any computer and Upload or Download any of your synchronized files.  Mom's recipe for Sugar Cookies and my wife's Christmas Card Address list are safe and sound and the Johnsons on the other side of the US will still get their pictures of my boys pretending to get along at Christmas time.  And I won't lose Mason's first snow mobile ride on the lake either.  Don't worry he was supervised, they don't ride single until they are 4 years old. ;)

What if my not so tech savvy wife/spouse/significant other/house pet deletes a file?  Well Dropbox has you covered there too.  You can restore deleted files up to 30 days in the past without the need for a Flux Capacitor and a Delorean.  If a file isn't deleted, maybe it is merely updated you can also get previous versions of that file.

So I had my wife take my flash drive and simply drop the files into the Dropbox folder and minutes later I had the documents I needed for the day.  And yes, she asked if she needed to drop the icons into the folder thingy.  Crises averted.

Inventomizations - Image Export Options

Welcome back to another Inventomization (still looking for the TM on this one).  With all the talk and hub-bub about Inventor Publisher, I thought I would take a stroll down memory lane on this idea of quick documentation and revisit one of my favorite tips.  In this posting we will take a look at a dynamite tip to get a fantastic image for PowerPoint or any other system that uses images from an engineer's Inventor designs to create either sales material, documentation, or just the good ole presentation to the boss.

When you have to export an image from Inventor a couple thoughts come to mind.  First you may consider a screen grab.  It's quick, easy and by far quickest way to grab something and put it in a PowerPoint or CAD administration guide.  For those that have forgotten the ways of the screen grab, let me refresh your memory.  Hit PrintScreen on your keyboard, this captures your current screen to the clipboard which you can simply Paste into anything else.  If you hold Alt+PrintScreen at the same time you get the active Window.

The next thing that you can use is the Inventor Save Copy As or Export commands.  These will take your current graphics screen and save them out as a Image file with a format of your choosing (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF).  Although the export options that are given here are rather limited.  For instance we can only change the X and Y of the capture and not the DPI.

If you have become savvy with Inventor enough to delve into the Inventor Studio environment you may have already found the answer to high quality presentations in the aspect of the rendering engine that Inventor uses.  In Inventor Studio, lights, surfaces, backgrounds can all be modified to get a desired result for marketing or sales scenarios.  Illustrative renderings can even be generated to create a sketched appearance to the design.

Here is where the dynamite tip comes in and saves me so much time when I don't have it to begin with.  When I have my Studio illustration or rendering ready for output, select the Options before saving.  This allows for more customization to the export than allowed in the normal environment of Inventor.  For instance, DPI is now a selectable value for most formats (GIF exlcuded).

Perhaps the most powerful export image type here though is the PNG format.  PNG allows for creation of an alpha channel that will drop the background from the image.  Now before you tried this you probably tried just a plain white background.  The problem with that is that there is STILL a background.  Alpha Channel will take the background and remove it from your design so that if fits better on screen with PowerPoint backgrounds as well in technical documentation to allow words to wrap around the image.

Related Inventomizations Posts:

iFeature Icons

Custom Color Schemes

Color and Texture

Constraint Audio

20 Inventor Tips in 20 Minutes

Okay, so it is more like 17 minutes.  But I have compiled my four part Inventor tip series from Autodesk University into one video.  These tips were presented right on the show floor but instead of just a video, the lucky viewers in the audience were graced with my presence.  I even hung around to sign autographs after the presentation and hand out flash drives and other trade show swag.  Okay, the only one who wanted my autograph was the person at the booth checking me off the list of other presenters showcased at the Authorized Training Center booth.  Now, without any further ramblings...enjoy.

20 Inventor Tips in 20 Minutes - Autodesk University from Mark Flayler on Vimeo.

Links to previous posts (no audio, but descriptions of each tip)

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4

Inventor AU Power Track - Sketched Symbols

This past year at Autodesk University I conducted a class on Sketched Symbols and their use with Inventor Drawings involving creation, use, and administration.  Here is a short preview of one of my favorite tips in the class.

Class Audience

Any user interested in standardization and custom symbol creation

Class Description

Drawing Manager in Autodesk Inventor has the functionality to create Custom Sketched Symbols to document your designs or standardize your company's notations and standards without the monotony of recreation. This class takes a look at the tools available in the Drawing Manager that are designed to facilitate this need. Learn to create and use custom notations and geometry to communicate your design. Utilize blocks from your AutoCAD® drawings for similar usage with little redesign for use in Inventor. Learn how to organize and update your symbol libraries using Inventor's Drawing Resource Transfer Wizard.

Key Learning

• Learn to create custom sketched symbols in the Drawing Manager
• Utilize existing blocks from AutoCAD files in Inventor drawings
• Learn how to use prompted entries, iProperties, and connection points effectively
• Identify Design Intent usage in your drawings
• Learn how to update and replace symbols across multiple drawing files

Make sure you check out Autodesk University for the complete class, handouts, FAQs, and Q&A for the class here: link

Determine Volume of a Container using Autodesk Inventor

A common question I get from Inventor students is how to obtain internal measurements of volume that is not actually modeled.  For instance, the amount of fluid that fills a manifold with multiple channels, or a tank/vessel that houses fluid or gas or even just a measurement of volume at different levels of fill.  Now if this was a simple cylinder it would be rather easy to get this volume, but with more complicated designs, like a hydraulic manifold we can use some new and old tricks with Inventor to accomplish the task quickly and without the need for advanced manual calculations or summations of data.

I've put together a video and a tutorial exercise describing some of these methods using simple calculation, assembly derivation, and using multi-body solids in Inventor 2010.

Exercise: Tutorial

Exercise File: Air-Box

Video Link (free file download with Vimeo account): Video

Why Doesn't Inventor or AutoCAD do...?

One of the most common questions I get is the title of this post.  There are a lot of reasons depending on the person asking the question and the nature of the reasoning for asking the question in the first place.  First off, there have been a lot of wacky patents thrown about in the software industry with everything from a method of licensing software to how a user actually clicks around and uses software.  Secondly, there are so many unique uses of these general design and manufacturing software that it is rather difficult to expect what everyone wants in the software.

Now what to do about all this?  Sit back and wait for the next release of Inventor and hope they read your mind telepathically from Lake Oswego?  Maybe get a weejie board out and try and predict your wishes?  Maybe make a Jump to Conclusions Mat and see where the cards fall?  How about something a bit more practical.  Here are a couple ways to get your opinions and suggestions heard...

Join the Beta program

Start by signing up here: Autodesk Beta Programs

When you enter into direct beta testing you are able to talk directly with the project managers and programming gurus at Autodesk to help shape the next release of the software and test for gross oversights and missing functionality.  Granted, if you don't get involved in the beta test early enough you may not be able to exact change in their internal builds.  So if you signed up and they are on Beta3 already, just be happy you got to see it early.  Now that doesn't mean your suggestions should stop.  In fact they look in this group of passionate users for ideas that eventually make it into the Subscription Bonus Packs as well as the next release of the software after the one that is being beta tested.

Also remember to swear the secret oath and to not reveal anything unless Autodesk does a press release first or major marking junket.  Or else the men in black suits will find you and put you in a bunker in Oregon.

Add an Augi Wish List Item

Surf your mousy thing here and click --> Augi Inventor Wish List, Augi AutoCAD Wish List

These wish lists are voted upon by members of the Augi (Autodesk User Group International) community and are a usually looked at with as much vigor as the beta forums.  So if you just can't find enough time or passion in your life to be a beta tester, the next best thing is to provide a wish here.  Now, you may sometimes see a wish in here that actually already exists in the software.  Well, we can't all be geniuses right?  But feel free to provide a wish after you have thought about it enough and tried everything else (discussion forum support or your local neighborhood Spiderman...er reseller I mean).  Twice a year they run a voting for the wish list and then you can rank everyone's wishes on a scale from 1 to 10.  As a reseller myself you can imagine that I get a few off the wall requests and a few common sense ones.  When I provide my feedback to Autodesk I do so through my direct method, but I also double it up here as to get more recognition of the wish.  The more visible the need, the higher the priority to Autodesk.  However if you ask Inventor do something that takes a complete overhaul of the software or takes the software in a direction that has nothing to do with Mechanical Design, don't be surprised when your wish upon an Augi never comes true.

Provide Direct Feedback

When I say direct feedback there are a couple of methods to go about this.

1. Submit a wish/feedback directly to Autodesk: Product Feedback
2. Use the Discussion Forums: MFG Community 
3. Tell your reseller:  They usually have a lot of high level conversations with Autodesk and can get your wish or feedback in their ear a lot faster and through a lot less red tape.

Lastly, remember, if you do nothing your wish will surely not become a reality or even discussed.  Autodesk does not yet employ telepathic programmers, although I hear of a beta project called Crystal Ball that sounds promising.  You know how I knew...the Beta forums.  Get involved today!

Inventor Mult Body Modeling: How to use with Autodesk Vault

My recent post on Inventor 2010’s multi-body parts got one of our Vault gurus thinking. My colleague Michael Thomas was at it again, and made a nice video of using the Multi Body aspects of Inventor 2010 with the Autodesk Vault line of products.

The advantage of using multi-body parts is that as a single part you are working with one set of parameters and features that can be applied across multiple bodies. Relationships are built without the need for sharing parameters, without using cross part associations and without the need for adaptivity. Once the part with multi-bodies are complete the Make Components feature generates parts representing each body, thus building the assembly…. Whoa, sounds awesome! BUT, how does a multi-body part work within the Vault? When a single part file is checked into the Vault only the single file is added, regardless if it has one solid body or multiple solid bodies. Why? As far as Vault is concerned there is only one file, just because it contains multi-bodies does not change the fact that there is only one file. This is ok however because the assembly has not been built and there is no need to manage anything else but the single part file. In the below example a simple part is split into two solid bodies (note the bodies were moved for clarity).

From here I use the Make Components command to build a new assembly based on this 2-body part file. The resultant assembly contains two new parts both tied to the original multi-body component. If the multi-body component is updated so are the new part files.

So what happens now when the assembly is checked into the Vault?

When the new assembly is checked into the Vault not only are the assembly and the new parts added to the Vault but Vault understands the relationship between the new assembly (and parts) and the original multi-body component. As you can see within Vault when the Where Used tab is selected for the multi-body component Vault automatically shows the parts and the assembly that use this component. This alone is worth putting the file into the Vault as you can quickly and easily determine the impact of changing the part with the multi-bodies. The opposite is also true of picking the assembly and selecting the Uses tab. The uses tab will list each reference contained within the assembly including the parts and the reference multi-body component used to build the parts.

As this is now vaulted to make changes to the original multi-body part it must first be checked out. The same can be said for the assembly, that before it can be updated with changes to the base component the assembly and parts must also be checked out. This prevents accidental changes and as Vault tracks versions you could always restore it to a previous version if your changes don’t pan out.

Vault manages file references. Where this is parts & assemblies, drawings & reference components, images, or multi-body top-down design… Vault understands these relationships and provides the tools needed to assist you. What happens if we rename the original multi-body part within Vault? What if we move it? What if we delete it? The delete is a trick question as Vault won’t let you delete a file that is used as a reference somewhere else. If I rename of move the original multi-body component the Vault automatically fixes all the file relationships.

So go, build your multi-body components, you can sleep well at night knowing that they will be managed by your Vault!

Related Michael Thomas Posts:

• Content Center: ADMS and Desktop Content
• Multiple Vault Clients: One System
• Version vs. Revision & Vault Content Searches and iFilters

Subscription Advantage Pack for Algor Released! Fatigue Wizard!

The Autodesk® Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk® Algor® Simulation 2010 includes Fatigue Wizard, innovative software that uses a wizard interface to guide designers and engineers of any expertise level through the steps required to perform complex fatigue analysis.

Fatigue analysis is vital for products such as steel rails, beams, girders and rotating stepped shafts that can experience mechanical failure under repeated or varying loads. Fatigue Wizard helps to predict fatigue-based failure and helps users design for durability by subjecting a product to cyclic stresses to determine its endurance limit and thereby increase safety.

Key features of Fatigue Wizard include:

• easily access functionality though a menu option in Autodesk Algor Simulation products
• provides step by step guidance through the process of setting up a fatigue analysis
• choose between stress- and strain-based analysis types
• specify material information using an extensive, editable database
• enter data to simulate real-world conditions, such as local stress concentrations and surface-finish effects

source