Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I don't have any experience with Amazon EC2, how much would it cost to run a vault server 24/7 for a year? Just enough space to host a few seasons worth of CAD files, 10GB max.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

It depends on alot of things. The way Amazon EC2 does pricing can be somewhat confusing at first. They offer concepts like 'spot instances' to allow websites to rapidly allocate additional non persistent serving potential.

They also offer 'Reserved' Instances, which allow you to pay an up front annual, or three year fee to allow for cheaper hourly rates.

To run amazon vault, I imagine at least a 'small' instance would be required.

If you took advantage of the annual leasing option, a small instance would be $69 up front, followed by $0.059 per hour, adding up to an average of 47 dollars a month, or $573 for the full year.

However, if you only wanted to run the server during competition season and not pay the upfront fee, it'd cost ~$82 a month.

Memory costs wouldn't be your problem, a small instance comes with 160 GB of storage space, however amazon charges bandwidth after the first gigabyte of out/inbound traffic at 12 cents a gigabyte. Depending on your use case/how efficient vault is this could run you a bit. IE if you have 40 work stations that all view all of your 10 GB worth of content.. etc :p .

It isn't free, but it is viable. It's also plausible that multiple teams could share a vault server.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

A newly created Amazon Web Services account is eligible for a free year of a certain class of service. It should be possible to run a "micro" instance of a Windows server for a year at no cost. After that year, however, you'll have to pay.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Micro instances are even cheaper than the above, though I have some concerns that a micro instance might be unable to run Vault.

For any other purpose, micro instances are exceedingly convenient.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

If we use SolidWorks, does that mean that my options are Windchill or PDM?

PDM requires a server, and I don't want to mess up our school's server.
Unfortunately, our school's tech support will not help us. (I asked last year)
EDIT: found the video tutorials...I could do it, but only if Windchill doesn't work out.

Windchill sounds great, so I signed up my team, but have a few unanswered questions. Does anyone know how long it takes PTC to email you back? Are there speed issues? Were can I get the ProjectLink for Solidworks?

We used external-hard-drive-style organization last year, and it was terrible...especially when updating trivial features. I don't want to go back.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

You could also try posting questions here, there are plenty of Windchill users on Chief Delphi. There is also a user group for PTC products with very active forums at ptcuser.org. (I'm the portal admin and on the Board of Directors.) There is also a Community on PTC.com as well.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I don't want to say that your only options are SolidWorks PDM and WindChill. I am not too familiar with any of the other options.

WindChill answers:
How long it takes PTC to respond, it really depends. They are essentially setting up the server for you, so the initial response could take a few days. Other than that, I have had good response from them, usually the same day or within 24 hours. They don't really operate over the weekends, so you may experience more of a delay then.
Speed Issues - You will notice that WindChill may seem a bit slow, but do realize you are uploading content to a server somewhere else other than a local place. The speed is by no means slow, but it is lower than having a local network server. I have not noticed any performance issues with the speed from WindChill.
ProjectLink for SolidWorks - once you have been given a login to WindChill youwill be able to download it. Go to "Quick Links" in the upper right hand corner, and from there choose "Software Downloads". Click Accept and then a list of products to download appear. You will want to download "WindChill Workgroup Manager", which should be the last option.

I hope this answers your questions.

As a side note, the other options in the downloads are pretty neat as well. The plug-in for MS-Office is really handy, this is called "WindChill Desktop Integration". It allows you to save and check-in documents withouth leaving word, excel, powerpoint, etc. The plug-in for project will allow for a single schedule to be uploaded and synced with the project.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Just as anticipated, yes the integration of WindChill into Inventor is good to go (as far as I can tell, i didn't completely battle test it but it does have the same feel). PTC is the maker of Creo (formerly Pro/Engineer) and WindChill is a PTC product. The integration to the 'third party' software packages are the same for the most part.

I use PTC's Creo and WindChill at work. There is a little bit more functionality with this set up than the 'third party' applications. I was very pleased with the WindChill implementation of SolidWorks; and now Inventor.

Look through this other thread for my other posts on how to setup a WindChill account for the team and download the workgroup manager for Inventor.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Thanks so much for looking into that!

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Is there a way to use the Workgroup PDM off-site logged in? Would we need a VPN? Do you have any suggestions? ::rtm::

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

In case any other teams are wondering PTC is supporting Solidworks 2012 in Windchill for this season. They are planning to roll out the upgraded Work Group Manager sometime after the holidays to the FRC windchill server.

"first_support at ptc.com" is the place to ask questions about Windchill and using other PTC products in FRC.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Ok, so I have spent the past few months playing around with Windchill and Solidworks PDM.

Windchill:
Pros:
The account system was easy to use. Inviting new members was easy.
When our management account lost its privileges, (my mistake), the people at PTC were very helpful and prompt to fix my mistakes.
Revision control worked well, I could roll back parts easily.
It's online, so anyone can access it. However it is a bit slow...more on that later.
Workgroup Manager is deeply integrated into SolidWorks 2011
Importing my massive CAD library was easy.
Cons:
The Workgroup Manager can take a long time to download and build, give it an hour or so (if you are building it).
When our team received our new SolidWorks 2012 copies, we found out that Workgroup Manager was not compatible with it, and would not be until well after build season.
When I installed Workgroup Manager on our school workstations (whose internet connection is not the best), Windchill was almost unusable. Its a great piece of software, but only if you can reach it!

Overall, If I ever switch to PTC Wildfire, then I know exactly which PDM to use! :D

SolidWorks PDM:
Alas, our mentors and students did not want to switch to PTC products, so Windchill will be laid to rest for now.

We obtained a copy of Windows Server 2012 Datacenter through MS DreamSpark, and installation went without a hitch. (Just happened to have an old chassis lying around;) )). The one thing about Solidworks PDM is that is seems to require IIS (Internet Information Services... I think) and an older version of .net. This means that it may not require Windows Server to run the vault, just a Professional or higher edition of Windows. Again, not fully sure about this. The trick to using the PDM is to remember to install the server products, and to install SolidWorks Explorer and Vault Admin (from the individual installation option).

Pros:
Quite fast. We have a wired Gigabit network...
Integrated extensively into SolidWorks (What else would you expect)?
Easy to upload and version parts.
Very easy to use.
Admin tools versatile.

Cons:
Many options are only available from the Vault Admin. This is to be expected from a business product though. Only the Admin should be capable of making a mess.
Still haven't figured out why batch uploading files does not work.
Local. Unless we use a VPN (ddwrt?) to connect to our local network, then we will have trouble cadding at home. Which is fine for us; all the i7 workstations are at school anyway.

Good luck with whichever options you choose, and feel free to PM me with questions.

Autodesk Vault File Structure and Training
 

CD community,

I am wondering if anyone has a quick reference guide to setting up a Project file and folder structure for use with Autodesk Vault in Inventor, as well as any training materials for students on how to check in/check out files within the Vault structure.

Some quick background: I know just enough to be dangerous in Inventor, and am not well-versed in using the project file and working directory myself. Our team CAD work to this point has been largely single-user, one-off efforts with no file management or version control. I would like to elevate the team’s use of CAD for design work and would like to implement the use of Vault with Inventor.

Our team owns one computer which runs Vault Server 2011 (I found the install disc from the 2011 KOP). This will also be the primary “working” computer for our CAD team working in Inventor 2011. The school’s computer lab has Inventor 2011 installed, so we have chosen to work in 2011 on our team computer to enable students to transfer their work back and forth. The school computers have Vault client installed, and are able to successfully connect to our server, but do not appear to have the Inventor plug-in for Vault installed (the Vault check-in/check-out menu is not available). I will pursue working with the IT dept to see if we can get them to run the Inventor Vault plug-in, but for now we may have to transfer files with a jump drive to the main computer to check them in (our CAD team is not too large, so this should be manageable for now if we can get the workflow correct).

I am struggling a bit to understand the relationship between the location of the Vault folder, Inventor project file, working directory, Content Center files, libraries, etc. and how these should be set up on our main computer to keep things clean and usable. I currently have errors when starting a new part that the texture files cannot be found, and I believe last year we had some file reference issues when trying to use downloaded parts in our assembly. I believe this could be because the default installation of Inventor created a directory location within “My Documents.” In general, we would like to store most of our files (especially all of our Vault files) on the K drive, which is a larger storage partition. The “My Documents” target has been moved from the standard location on the boot partition (C), to the K drive. We also have two user accounts (Mentor and Student) set up on the computer. In addition to 2011, we also have Inventor 2012 installed, which may be complicating things more by creating duplicate directories. I am considering uninstalling both Inventor versions and starting fresh to be able to carefully set up the proper locations from scratch, but I’m not sure what the recommended setup should be. I’m also looking for recommendations on how to set up our Project file structure. Should we have one project per year? One for prototyping then one for robot design? Just one overall project file with separate sub-folders under it? Should I try to set up the 2013 KOP as a library? Any recommendations (or screen shots of a setup that works for you) would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Katie
Mentor, FRC 2052 KnightKrawler