Vault experiences

[ungarata]

Guys;

can someone who uses Autodesk's Vault please give me some
feedback on it? I've used Intralink in the past with
Pro/E, but i would like to hear firsthand from users what
Vault is like. How does it work if two people want to work
on the same part at the same time? What if someone
modifies a part that is in an assembly that someone else
has open - how are they notified? Is is quirky? Reliable?

 

[dgorjup]

First, two people cannot work on the same part at the same time. If one checks out a part, it is loaded to the local computer for changes and "reserved" to that person. Another person can "Get" the same file and make changes but they will not be permitted to put it back in Vault unless they use file save as and save it under a new name.

Second, if one person has an assembly checked out (loaded for work on the local drive) but not all of it's constituent parts, other may change those parts. The person working on that assembly will not be explicitly notified. It is imperative that team members use the separate application commonly called the Vault Browser to monitor usage and communicate with each other as to intentions. If someone has checked an altered part into Vault, the Assembly Owner may use a tool in Inventor called Refresh From Vault" to get the latest model data from Vault.

Quirky? Yes, sometimes. Especially if you're coming in cold with no implementation expertise or help.

Reliable? Pretty much. We manage over 200,000 Inventor files over hundreds of projects with little or no trouble. Occasionally we have a network hiccup where Inventor loses session data with Vault and we'll sometimes lose a couple of man hours of work because of that. But that's an IT/network issue, not an Inventor/Vault issue.

In a nutshell, if you leverage your VAR's knowledge and expertise on implementation Vault can be a pretty sweet tool, particularly the upper versions with Rev Control and BOM transfer capabilities. If you try to go it alone from the beginning I can almost guarantee you will have great heartache and teeth gnashing.

Hope this helps.