Vault Integration for Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD

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1 Anil Chintamaneni Autodesk, Inc. DM 7900 This class is designed for those who use Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD-based products for managing sheet sets and also use Autodesk Vault for data management. Now that Sheet Set Manager (AutoCAD 2012) and Vault (2012) are integrated, find out the benefits the integration offers and learn how to add sheet sets to Vault, how to work with a vaulted sheet set from within the Sheet Set Manager interface, how a sheet set appears in Vault, how Vault maintains the relationship between sheets and sheet drawings, how to extract sheet set properties and display them in Vault, and more. Learning Objectives At the end of this class, you will be able to: Add Sheet Sets to Vault Browse Sheet Set data in Vault Work with a vaulted Sheet Set Manage Sheet Set Properties in Vault Configure DWF Publish settings for sheet drawings Migrate legacy Sheet Sets About the Speaker Anil Chintamaneni is a User Experience Designer at Autodesk. Anil started at Autodesk in 2005 as a Quality Assurance Engineer and worked on Autodesk s Vault product line and Productstream Professional. Later, he became a User Experience Designer with his recent work being in the area of Vault Integration for Civil 3D and Vault Integration for the AutoCAD Sheet Set Manager. Before joining Autodesk, Anil worked as a contractor at Ford Motor Company as a Product Data Collaboration Engineer. anil.chintamaneni@autodesk.com

2 Introduction Vault integration for Sheet Set Manager in AutoCAD 2012 is available with Autodesk Vault Workgroup 2012, Autodesk Vault Collaboration 2012 and Autodesk Vault Professional This integration supports all of the functionality that is currently available with Sheet Set Manager. This seamless integration offers: Consistent look and feel for Sheet Set data inside Vault Uses, Where Used information for Sheet Set data inside Vault Search capability for Sheet Set data in Vault Concurrent editing of a given sheet set by multiple users Support for multi-site environments Key Terms For those of you that are new to Sheet Set Manager, A Sheet is a layout from a drawing, a Sheet Set is a collection of sheets from several drawings and Sheet Set Manager is the interface in AutoCAD that allows you to manage, organize, publish, transmit and archive sheet sets. NOTE: In some parts of this document you will notice the term, SSM which is nothing but the acronym for Sheet Set Manager. 2

3 Adding Sheet Sets to Vault To access Log In and Log Out commands inside SSM, right click in the white space just like in Xref Manager. However, it is not necessary to log in from SSM to access Vault. You can log in from other access points such as ribbon, Xref Manager, etc. in AutoCAD to work with Vault from SSM. Figure 1 In order to add a Sheet Set to Vault, open it in Sheet Set Manager and while the Vault status indicates that the Sheet Set is not in Vault, right click on the Sheet Set node and select Vault Check In Options such as DWF publishing can be selected on the Check In dialog. Figure 2 NOTE: On the Check In dialog, you will not find the DST among the list of list of files that are being added to Vault. In order to provide support for multi-user and multi-site workflows, a DST file is represented as several data files in Vault. These data files have the extensions, DSS, DSU and DSH. The DSS file represents Sheet Set, the DSU file represents Sub Set and the DSH file represents the Sheet. So for any given Sheet Set on the disk, Vault will have one DSS file, one DSU file for each Sub Set in that Sheet Set and one DSH file for each Sheet in that Sheet Set. 3

4 Browsing Vault for Sheet Set data Figure 3 Figure 4 To retain the structure, Sheet Set is represented as a folder and Sub Sets as sub-folders under the Sheet Set folder in Vault. The DSS file can be located in the Sheet Set folder and the DSU files in their respective Sub Set folders. The DSH files can be found in the Sheet Set or Sub Set folders based on the corresponding Sheet location in the Sheet Set structure. The first-level information in the Uses tab for a DSS file (Figure 3) shows exactly how the Sheet Set is shown in SSM. Whereas the Uses tab for a DSU file (Figure 4) shows the Sheets that are in that Sub Set. The Sheet Set where a Sheet drawing is located can be found by selecting Expand All on the Where Used tab for the Sheet drawing (Figure 5) Figure 5 The Uses tab for a Sheet file (DSH), Figure 6, shows its drawing file whereas its Where Used tab, Figure 7, shows its Sheet Set. Figure 6 Figure 7 4

5 Working with a vaulted Sheet Set Sheet Sets can be opened from Vault by browsing to the desired DSS file using the Open from Vault command from SSM. Once opened from Vault, you can perform any SSM related operations on a Sheet Set. The Vault status for the Sheet Set node represents the status of the DSS file in Vault whereas for the Sheet node, it represents the status of the corresponding Sheet drawing in Vault. Vault commands for a Sheet Set can be accessed by right clicking on the Sheet Set node in SSM (Figure 8). At the Sheet Set level, all Vault commands act upon all of the Sheet drawings that belong to that Sheet Set. Vault commands for a Sheet can be accessed by right clicking on the Sheet node in SSM (Figure 9). At the Sheet level, all Vault commands act upon corresponding Sheet drawing. Figure 8 NOTE: It is recommended to perform all edit operations (such as Rename, Remove, Move, etc. inside SSM. Vault will take care of updating the related data files (DSS, DSU and DSH) if necessary. It is not recommended to perform the above edit operations on the data files by accessing them directly from Vault Explorer. Figure 9 5

6 Manage Sheet Set properties in Vault Sheet Set and Sheet properties can be extracted by defining mappings using the Content Source Property Provider (CSPP), Sheet Set Data. This CSPP allows read-only mappings, which means properties can only be extracted from the Sheet Set/Sheet and displayed in Vault, but properties that are edited in Vault cannot be written back to the Sheet Set/Sheet drawing. NOTE: Users with Administrator role only can define property mappings. Figure 10 For project level properties, define mappings based on DSS file and for sheet level properties, define mappings based on DSH files. After the mappings have been defined, anytime a new Sheet Set, containing properties that are defined in Vault, is added to Vault the values for those properties will be extracted. For Sheet Sets that are already in Vault though, a round-trip of the data files will be needed. For that you can simply open the Sheet Set from Vault and perform an action that would require updating the data files (DSS/DSH), for example, bring up the properties dialog for the Sheet Set/Sheet and update properties. In order to access these properties in Vault Explorer, select the data file (DSS for project level properties and DSH for sheet level properties) that you are interested in and look for the desired property on the Properties grid in Vault Explorer. Just like any other properties, Sheet Set/Sheet properties can be searched upon in Vault. 6

7 Configure DWF publish settings for Sheet drawings When performing certain operations on a vaulted Sheet Set inside SSM, sheet drawings are automatically checked out, updated and checked back in to Vault. DWF publishing for these auto Check-In workflows can be controlled by editing the Preferences.xml that can be found at %APPDATA%\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2012 Vault AddIn\Objects on the Client workstation. Following is the section of Preferences.xml that pertains to DWF publishing for auto Check-In It is the property, DWF Option that you would want to change to control DWF publishing for auto Check- In. And the possible values for this property are: No DWF This is the default value and DWF will not be published during auto Check In Create DWF locally DWF will be published during auto Check In Create DWF using Job Server DWF will not be published during auto Check In, but a DWF creation job will be sent to Job Server NOTE: 1) This is a Client side setting, so, it has to set separately on each Client. 2) AutoCAD must be restarted after editing Preferences.xml TIP: Exit AutoCAD before editing Preferences.xml, otherwise, your changes to Preferences.xml will be overwritten with the current values. 7

8 Migrate legacy Sheet Sets When Vault integration for SSM was not available, some users were still saving their Sheet Sets (DST) to Vault by checking them in via Vault Explorer. They were also managing the Sheet drawings in Vault. But in order to work with these DST files that are in Vault, they would download/check out the DST to their workspace and open them in SSM from the workspace. They can continue to do so today, but, in order to take advantage of the Vault integration for SSM, they must convert the DST in Vault to DSS. The conversion process is simple. Download the DST to working folder, open it in SSM from there and check it in by selecting the Check In command from the Vault menu on the right click menu for the Sheet Set node. TIP: Sheet Sets in Vault (DSS) can be converted into a DST for purposes such as sharing with external partners, etc. To do that, simply open the Sheet Set from Vault, select etransmit/archive from the right click menu for the Sheet Set in SSM. Once converted to a DST, a Sheet Set can be opened in SSM and worked on just like any other DST. 8

9 Additional Resources AutoCAD Help Understanding Sheet Set Manager Vault Help Sheet Set Manger Integration 9