What's New in Autodesk Vault

In 2013 compatibility grows with an ever broader range of Autodesk's content creation and collaboration tools:

• Autodesk Moldflow
• Autodesk ECSCAD
• Autodesk Alias Design
• Autodesk Alias Automotive
• Autodesk Alias Surface

To expand the consumption of Vault data and better integrate at the enterprise level, Autodesk Vault now offers the ability to integrate directly inside of the standard Microsoft Sharepoint interface, utilizing the Microsoft BCS (Business Connectivity Service) to provide user authenticated access to data, perform federated searches on Sharepoint and Vault metadata, view Vault contents, and leverage Vault objects in custom Sharepoint workflows.

See SharePoint Integration for more information.

Vault now supports new Synergy file relationships, allowing users to manage the model to dwg relationship on check in, place models in AutoCAD from Vault, manage dwf creation, and utilize Pack & Go, move, and rename commands from within Vault.

In an effort to expand Vault's design project credentials, 2013 now permits users to add lifecycle schemes and state-based security to their project folders.

Building on transitional rules and category settings users can now provide conditional restrictions on folder state changes and apply security overrides to folder access control lists and folder content not already managed by file state-based securities.

This feature introduces a number of security override paradigms.

The lifecycle transitions tab is now updated to include a number of new transitional rules permitting users to configure the folder release process to ensure that all files contained within the project folder are released prior to the change as well as any sub folders or linked objects.

This functionality can also be used to lock any unmanaged file types as part of the release process and ultimately allows the Administrator control over the folder or file security with access to the folder state overrides.

2013 has introduced an overhauled open and place dialog complete with a customizable grid view allowing users to choose columns, and filter and sort as they do in the Vault Explorer. Users can also quick search the grid contents of the dialog - create quick view preferences to quickly toggle columns on and off, as well as display traditional file lists and icon views.

In Inventor, the dialog has been updated to allow basic or advanced searches on file properties, allow the creation and display of shortcuts, as well as allow access to available saved searches without needing to activate the advanced find dialog, which is still available at the bottom of the window.

In response to major requests from users in previous releases, new check-in settings will allow the user to scan the current project or model folder for related documentation including idw, dwg, and ipn files.

This was viewed as a major productivity enhancement for users who do not regularly check in their design documentation as they create it.

In addition to associated files, the new release will also allow users to check in assemblies with components not loaded into memory. Users are now seamlessly able to add assemblies with suppressed parts or alternate levels of detail.

See Check-in Files and Folders for more information.

Inconsistencies in the management of iParts and iAssemblies have been addressed in 2013 with improved file relationship management.

iPart factory members are now kept in sync with the factory via automatic check out on creation of new or updated members.

The Vault ribbon within Inventor now adds the change category command permitting users to change the category assignment throughout the design process without going back to Vault Explorer.

The new command supports multi-select in the Vault browser as well as extending support to AutoCAD.

See Change Category for more information.

Autodesk 2013 has introduced the ability to open parent model or drawing files directly from the file details dialog. Now in addition to looking at file history, the user can switch to the where used tab and open parent files up and down the relationship list.

Filters also make it easier to identify or isolate 2D documentation related to a component.

From simply storing contact information to creating lifecycle managed tasks, 2013 now permits users to define objects to store and manage unique content to fit your business process.

Custom Objects leverage Category functionality complete with properties and object security provided by lifecycle schemes, allowing Custom Objects to be assigned an ACL on creation or via state based controls.

See these sections for more information:

• Custom Objects Administration
• Manage Custom Object Instances

2013 sees the introduction of Bill of Material specific values to track administrative level MBOM information and provides a method to store unique information for a single component across several different BOMs.

These new properties are accessible through the server API only.

2013 introduces the ability for the ADMS server to support the previous release client integrations. This provides Enterprise and SMB operators who need to stagger the client and server side roll out, the flexibility to do so. The company's ADMS server can now be migrated to 2013 and commissioned without any need to upgrade or otherwise patch the numerous client machines connecting to their current 2012 server.

2013 features improvements to the overall speed of replication and reduces the complexity associated with file ownership.

The introduction of streamlined file ownership procedures has removed the existing disruptive and complicated process of requesting file ownership from alternate sites. The initial document ownership request is now carried out as a background process whenever ownership is needed. The default lease period has been revised down to 0 minutes, meaning that as soon as a user has completed the changes deemed necessary on the file and has checked it back into their local site, it immediately becomes eligible for ownership transfer to another site.

These changes should ensure users do not have to leave their CAD application to separately manage ownership.

See these sections for more information:

• Ownership Administration
• Manage Ownership

Additionally 2013 introduces the concept of site affinity. Where in the current model the system administrator has no direct control over the source of a given sites replication, we have added the ability to set an order of preference to the locations from which a server will seek to replicate its filestore data. This means that sites connected by a very strong, reliable network connection can be configured with priority over those workgroup servers located further away and those with higher latency.

See Replication Priority for more information.

Additional controls have been added to the 2013 ADMS console permitting administrators to reduce files affected by a re-index operation by filtering on file extension, property provider, and date range.

Users are no longer required to index those files which are not affected by new UDP mappings.

See Manage Indexing for more information.

Autodesk's continued efforts in the overall quality and speed of interaction continues with new support for 64 bit ADMS server in 2013.

Also new to this release is file compression and transfer between server - server and server - client connections with incremental improvement to transfer rates.

Support has been improved when displaying larger data sets in terms of folder and dialog access.

Another great performance and administrative update for 2013 are changes to file store management. As of 2013, metadata only changes to files do not result in new file creation within the Vault filestore. In previous releases this would have resulted in identical duplicate files in the filestore.

Vaults migrated from previous releases will be scanned to remove these known duplicates, resulting in a smaller initial filestore and slower filestore growth going forward.