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Catchy title, eh? Or confusing. This is essentially a collective follow up to this post and video tutorial on identifying and categorizing Inventor’s Content Center components. Why? It all has to do with setting these file to a happily Released state upon check in to Vault. For most of you this worked out based on feedback. On the other hand, many noted that while this works great for nuts and bolts, there were files that triggered the ‘Is CC Part’ property flag and became released and locked – but they were not really supposed to. These are the Tube & Pipe parts, the Frame Generator parts. These in theory should not jump into a Released state, they are part of the project and may need additional tweaking. Let’s take a look at how we can have the best of both worlds with Vault, and identify these not-quite-standard Content Center components.
First, reflect on how we triggered the other CC parts. There is a dormant property in all parts that are born out of the Content Center called Is Content. We took steps to identify this and we need to take another step for Tube & Pipe, Frame Gen, etc. So, we’ll again use Properties that are in all of those files. Take a look below at images of Custom iProperties in those individual .ipt files. First, the G_L iProp from Frame Generator:
Next, the Overall Pipe Length “OPL” iProp from a pipe run:
Then the ‘PL’ iProperty from Tube & Pipe:
So, now that we have target properties, the next step is to log into Vault as an Administrator. Go to Tools>Administration>Vault Settings>Behaviors tab. Click Properties and create a new User Defined Property. Call this ‘Channel Length’ and associate it to all file categories.
Now, click the Mapping tab. Click to add a new mapping, and either select files in or outside Vault that posses these custom iProperties mentioned above. In the example below, I mapped my User Defined Property (UDP) ‘Channel Length’ to G_L, OPL, and PL to pick up on the values contained in those files, This will ultimately populate into Vault, and we can search or report on them later. For now however, all we need it to expose a value in that property for the Category Rule to trigger off of.
Next, create a new Category (optional) for these Custom Standard parts. Like all Categories, you have the ability to assign behaviors. I suggest no implied Rev scheme, and a Lifecycle Definition that does not default to Released.
Now for the final step. Go to the Category Rules area under the Behaviors tab and modify the existing Content Center rule. Add the Channel Length, condition Is Empty. then make a copy of this, place it below, and call it Custom Content Center, and change the Channel Length to Is Not Empty. Still with me? We’re trying to trigger off whether there is a value or not from the Inventor Content Center part custom iProperty. If there is one, its a custom cc part, if its empty, its get the CC Category.
-Brian Schanen
