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Hello my name is Brian and I am a Vault user {welcome, Brian}. I’ve been using Vault since the ‘before times’ and I’d like to share some of the must-have programs that I STILL use in my travels implementing Vault. We’ll begin our utility spotlight with an old favorite of mine: Design Assistant.
Technically known as Design Assistant for Autodesk Inventor, this is always installed with each seat of Inventor. you can find this in the program group area with all the other utilities.
This launches stand alone Design Assistant. Now, there is an option to launch Design Assistant from within Inventor that is file-specific, but I find stand alone mode is more flexible for use during an implementation and maintenance. One feature that this mode gives you is the ability to Open a Folder to examine all subfolders and Inventor files within.
So, why would one want to use the ‘DA’ when you have the Vault? If you’re an Inventor user, you know about iProperties. There are a few properties that Administrators may be concerned with, such as the Inventor version that a file was last opened/saved/updated with.
Another case is for customers that may have dabbled in Semi-Isolated or Shared mode. Remember that? Oh yeah, there are still some people using it today. This clashes with Vault – another post for another time - and tracking down this issue starts with a look at the iProperties.
So the Design Assistant to the rescue. Like Vault, you can configure the columns to look at. Once open, go to View>Customize and turn on the necessary columns. In my example below I have turned on property fields that will expose reservation status and Inventor version.
Using the Open folder command, you can now examine files in folders and take necessary actions to migrate files or remove the reservations.
Next, we’ll take a look at Inventor Task Scheduler.
-Brian Schanen
