Power in a Mid-Year Extension
At Autodesk University 2013 I delivered a class about Revision Management within Autodesk Vault [PL1341] - Whose Version Should We Believe?—Revising the Story with Autodesk® Vault]. At that time there were two distinct methods of managing revisions: files and items. Although the two could kind of coexist, they weren’t really designed to work together. Fast forward almost one year and everything has been turned on its head and requires a revision to this revision presentation.
Autodesk recently released Vault 2015 R2, a mid-year extension for Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional. This “extension” adds a significant amount of new features and functionality including Vault Office, a new Copy Design “experience,” and a merger of file and item lifecyle management and execution.
Note: This is a subscription only release, meaning it’s only available to subscription Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional customers.
What’s the Version of that Revision?
Before diving into what’s new, let’s first review what an Autodesk Vault Revision is. In engineering, it is important to understand the nature of changes to files and the information they contain.
Autodesk Vault Basic provides Version control, but no tools to manage and track change. Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional move from a simple data management tool that just tracks versions to a system managing the change of your files, from creation to retirement.
Looking at the three versions of Vault, we have:
- Vault (Basic) = Version Management “Organize, manage, and track data creation, simulation, and documentation.”
- Vault Workgroup = Vault + “Project lifecycles”: tools to manage change on files, workflows, lifecycles, and other revision management tools.
- Vault Professional = Vault Workgroup + items and tools for managing changes to items (change orders).
A Version should be looked at as an iteration of something—like having multiple copies of it; something that is different from the previous copy.
A Revision is a milestone. It’s the act of making a change and completing the work required for that revision. A revision can be made up of multiple versions. The versions are the steps to get to the revision; the revision is what gets released to everyone else.
We could maintain history (revisions) within Vault by appending the revision number to the file name. This would be a manual process, but would create multiple copies of the document, which would quickly become a nightmare. This isn’t why we all moved to Vault—we did not want more nightmares.
All flavours of Vault maintain versions of all files checked into Vault. The previous versions can be restored as the current version at any time. These are very important during the design and modification phase, but once the project is completed and released they start to lose their importance.
Learning from the Past: Pre-R2
Prior to R2, files and items had two distinctly different processes of managing revisions and lifecycles. The item process came first, but never really grew from its initial release. The file lifecycle management process came later and was much more flexible and configurable. With Vault 2015 R2 the item lifecycle management system has been integrated into the existing file and folder system to get the same workflows, processes, security, and configuration as files and folders.
What Are Items?
Items represent the components that the company manages, assembles, sells, and manufactures.
Within Vault Professional, items are records stored within an item master. The item master is a master list of everything within the engineering system. Each item is assigned a unique item number (identifier) which is used to locate, edit, update, and track changes to an item.
Items are used to:
- Provide access to the data for everyone who needs access. This will also include non-engineering staff without access to a CAD application.
- Provide a mechanism for the exchange of data between systems.
- Issue new numbers (i.e., stock numbers).
In pre R2 Vault, the “out-of-the-box” lifecycle states provided were Work In Progress, In Review, Released, and Obsolete. The names of these states can be adjusted, but cannot be deleted, nor can additional states be created.
What’s New in R2?
“A New Unified Lifecycle, Category, Numbering Scheme, and Revision Experience.”
File, folder, and custom object lifecycle management is nothing new. However, items now belong to the same lifecycle club, meaning everything you can do with the others including building your own workflows, adding reactions to state changes, revision schemes, and changing categories, is now available to Items.
Vault 2015 R2 Lifecycle Definitions Item Release Process and Vault 2015 R2 item admin dialog
Lifecycles
You have Vault Workgroup or Vault Professional and are ready to take the step to Revision Management…. now what? You need to familiarize yourself with Vault lifecycle definitions.
The Autodesk Wiki describes lifecycles as:
A lifecycle definition is an engine that can be configured to automatically assign security, behaviors, and properties to Vault objects based on where the object is in the life of the design process.
The goal here is not to explain lifecycles in detail, but just highlight their importance with how files and folders are revised and their revisions tracked.
General Steps
- Assign the category
- Change the state
- Revise the file
- Change the state
- Repeat
What Are Categories?
Vault Categories provide a grouping method for a set of files, folders, custom objects, or items. They are a key aspect of using Vault lifecycles as they are configured to assign user-defined properties to the objects, the available lifecycle definitions, and Revision schemes.
To change the Category assigned, select the object(s) and click the Change Category button. The subsequent dialog will allow you to select from the existing categories.
States
With Vault lifecycles the state identifies the current status within the lifecycle—for example, Work in Progress (WIP) or Released. The number and type of states the object transitions through in its lifecycle is based on the Lifecycle Definition Transition Rules.
To change the state, select the file, folder, or custom object and click the Change State button. In the Change State dialog you can adjust the lifecycle state (what’s listed is controlled by the category assigned to the object) and the state you want to switch the object to. Depending on the settings you might also notice the revision value change as well.
Revision Schemes
Revision Schemes define the Revision value applied to the file and the sequence of subsequent values. You specify how the primary, secondary, and tertiary revisions appear. The scheme forces the users into predefined values, so they cannot stray away from the standard.
The “Out-of-the-Box” Revision Schemes
Standard Alphabetic (A, B, B.1, B.1.1 to ZZ)
Default Alphabetic (same as standard but starts at rev “-“)
Standard Numeric (1, 2, 2.1, 2.1.1 to 99)
Default Numeric (same as standard but starts at rev “-“))
Default ASME Y14.35M (-, A, B, A.1, A.1.1 | no I, O, Q, S, X, Y) [1]
For example the Standard Numeric Format (one of the ones that is out-of-the-box) starts at 1 and increments by 1, not skipping any numbers.
To get started access the Vault Settings dialog (Tools > Administration > Vault Options) and navigate to the Behaviors tab, “Edit and Manage Lifecycles and Revisions” section, and click the Revisions… button. Note: You can either copy an existing scheme or start from scratch.
- Name the new revision definition and enter a description.
- Select the categories in which you want the new scheme to be available. This can include files and items.
- Assign the three scheme formats (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and the delimiter.
- If the desired scheme format is not available, create a new scheme format.
The scheme definition is simply the list of values available to the Revision. In most cases it’s easiest to copy an existing scheme and tweak it; otherwise, if you start from scratch you’ll be defining each and every value in the scheme.
Once a scheme is used it cannot be modified, so make sure it’s what you want before you start using it.
For example, we start at Rev 0 which is the initial release to manufacturing. The “out-of-the-box” numeric options either start at – or 1. We created a copy of the Default Numeric called 0-BASED which is identical but starts at 0 instead of –
You can mix schemes in the revision scheme definition, for example, using “Alphabetic” for Primary, “Numeric” for Secondary, and “0-BASED” for Tertiary.
Manually Adjusting the Revision Level
Revision Bump
To “bump” the revision to the next available value in the current revision scheme, select the file(s) and click the Revise button. Select the level you want to bump (i.e., are you going from 1 to 2 or 1 to 1.1?) and the Revision value will automatically go to the next level.
The ability to adjust the revision of the file will depend on the permissions assigned to your Vault user account, the category the files belongs to, and the current state of the file.
User Specified Revision Value
To adjust the revision, manually click in the Revision field and type the value you want. Again this value needs to “fit” within the scheme definition. I couldn’t enter “hello” if my revision scheme was A, B, C or 1, 2, 3.
In the image shown below, note the red exclamation mark beside the revision level as the current entered value “hello” does not fit within the Standard Alphabetic Format.
This is extremely useful with files with historical revisions occurring before they were put into Vault. If I add a drawing to Vault that is currently at Rev 14, I don’t want to have to bump the revision 14 times. I can Revise the file and set the revision to 14.
Once a Revision level is achieved, there is no going backwards. If I take a file and manually adjust from 1 to 11, I will not be able to assign revision levels 2 through 10 to it.
Automatic Revision Bumping
Automatic Revisions
Lifecycle states identify the current status of your file within the lifecycle definition. A very basic workflow would be two states (such as Work in Progress and Released). By themselves, the lifecycle states are simply labels that represent various stages you want your files to transition through.
The Transition of a state determines many things, but with Revisions it manages the actions that happen during the state change (such as revision bump), and the Security, as in who can make the specific state change.
In the state configuration dialog, use the Actions tab to define what occurs during a state change and the Security tab to specify who can make the transition state change.
There is no turning back the clock. Once a revision level has been used, you cannot go to a lower value!
Item lifecycle changes can be rolled back to a previous state using Roll Back Lifecycle State Change.
The R2 Catch
Isn’t there always a catch? Before installing R2, it is important to understand that the following features are disabled in R2. Autodesk is confident that it can implement the new R2 functionality and restore the missing features with 2016, so many, especially those with fully implemented items, might be waiting for 2016.
The following Item features are not available in R2:
- Compare Bill of Materials
- Item Import
- Item Export
- Item Package Service APIs
- Purge Item
- Purge
- Purge All
- Item Restore
- Item Rollback Lifecycle State Change
- Item Effectivity
- Restricting Item Lifecycle State Change to Change Orders
As with all new features, there is a list of limitations and restrictions. Here is a link to the readme—make sure you have read through everything so there are no surprises with installation and deployment.
I think the new functionality is great, especially bringing the file lifecycle options to items. File lifecycle management has had all this flexibility and customization and the item workflows have remained stagnant. Those just moving to Vault Pro or who have only partially implemented items will love this new flexibility.
Mike Thomas graduated with the honor of Most Distinguished Graduate in CAD/CAM engineering technology from the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST). He is a specialist in the manufacturing industry with a strong knowledge of the Autodesk, Inc., mechanical products, and he has a solid understanding of document management, hardware, networking, and other Autodesk technologies. He is now the technical services manager for Prairie Machine & Parts Mfg. (PM&P), and he is responsible for overseeing the Engineering department’s technical operations and strategic technical growth. His primary duties include providing ongoing support of critical computer systems and programs, facilitating the interactions between the engineering department and other departments, providing the engineering department with effective systems and technology, and working with PM&P's vice president and engineering managers on the development and implementation of a cohesive strategic plan for the technical growth of the department. Mike is an active contributor to Design & Motion (www.designandmotion.net).
[1] The American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) standard that defines the practices for revising drawings and associated documentation, includes the methods of identification and revision documentation.
