Vault Revision Tables in Inventor and AutoCAD Drawings

The new release of Autodesk Vault 2012 Workgroup, Collaboration and Professional brings a deeper level of integration with both Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD. Vault now provides support to populate the Revision Table within Inventor (idw or dwg) and AutoCAD (dwg). From Vault, you can map the Revision assigned to a file and have it reflect the revision-bumping rules. This means that Title Blocks get updated alongside Revision Tables, adding rows to match the correct Revision level in Vault. The benefit? This automation removes another step in the management of files from the users workflow.

Administration

Configuring the Revision Table integration begins in Vault. Log in with Administrative rights, and go to Tools > Administration > Vault Settings > Behaviours TAB. In the Properties area, click Revision Table. If you haven't set up Revision Tables, you will be met with an initially collapsed dialogue box. Check the box to Enable Revision Table Control.

The dialogue box transforms into a new window, and a prompt comes up. For the interim, click Yes to accept the default values, you can always modify them later.

Now, the next dialogue box is a glimpse into the mapping of Vault intrinsic (system) properties that will be directly mapped to the Revision Table. Toward the bottom of the dialogue are options to limit the row count, etc.

Click OK, and your work in Vault is done, time to apply this in Inventor or AutoCAD.

Application

Now it is time to use the Revision Table on a drawing. The example below is done using Inventor, however AutoCAD follows a very similar process. Open an Inventor idw or dwg that is under Revision management, then go to the Annotate ribbon, select the Vault Revision feature.

Place the Revision Table on the drawing, which will reflect the up-to-date information from Vault. To finish Save, Check In and repeat for all drawings.

The Vault family 2012 takes Revision management further by integrating with core CAD functionality, reducing manual efforts by drafters and designers.

This is an extract from the Under the Hood, Manufacturing Community Blog