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Tracking document revisions on your Inventor or AutoCAD drawings is a vital part of the manufacturing and construction process, a key part of the design communication and something frequently managed by Vault making integration with drawing data a big deal for many customers.
It's good news then, based on your feedback, that Autodesk Vault 2014 sees a number of great new enhancements to the Revision Table integration used in Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD products.
In the next few posts we are going to go through these changes in detail, but let’s start out by taking a look at one of the biggest (and perhaps most misunderstood) changes, tracking which file version properties we are referencing when we talk about the revision.
This can be a tricky one as a document “Revision” may have more than one version and in fact even more than one released state.
As an example, if we were to release a file in Vault Explorer our transition rule may trigger an action on the Job processor to write data back to the file and create a visualization, thus creating two file versions which are both released and at the same revision. Likewise if we make a “Quick Change” to a Released file this creates a new released version of that file – so we need to decide what is the most correct information to display in the table – the properties when it was first released or the last properties associated with the released file.
So In 2014 we are now able to select whether the first file version in any released state or the last version in any released state should be displayed in your revision table. This appears under the Revision Table Settings, Content tab as “Populate Information using First / Last Version”
So, what if we have more than one released state? Some design teams utilize an internal release state like “Approved” before a document moves to “Released to Manufacture / Construction / Customer” or an “As Built” released state.
Each of these may have the same Rev Number but there could be a different approver or detail so we need to know which State represents the properties we want to see in the table.
Below the version settings is the “Populate information from the First / Last released state information” which lets the user decide whether the revision table information should come from your first released state or the last released state.
Using these settings in conjunction it is technically possible to have 4 different sources of document revision detail being: the first version of the first state, last version of first state, first version of last state and last version of last state and should ensure you end up with exactly the right properties for your drawing.
Confused? Head over to the wiki to find out more information or jump in and have a play with these settings and make sure your Inventor and AutoCAD tables have the right detail!
-Allan
