CAD Revision Control
 

Last season, we cad-ed our robot for the first time and used dropbox to manage collaboration between cadders (we had 7). To be blunt, it sucked (but to be fair it wasn't designed for it). Everything worked fine until we combined subsystems and then everything fell apart. Because of the intertwined dependencies, only one person could work on the robot at a time from that point on. I vividly remember doing lightening patterns at 2am.

It seems that products like Autodesk Vault are the professional worlds way of tackling this problem. Has anyone been able to get a copy of this from Autodesk?

If not, how does your team deal with this problem?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I know that you can download Vault, because I have, but I do not have any experience with it, as I am the only CAD member on my team.

Edit: You should be able to download it here: http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=fir...12-LA-1-6-2012
You will need to log in if you have a FIRST autodesk account, but then navigate to available downloads and it should be there.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Thats what I thought as well, but it seems that they have removed vault from the free student software?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Hmm, I just checked and that seems to be the case. It downloads when you download inventor pro though.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Ok, I am trying that right now. Does that install the server too or just the client?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I think that's the Vault Client software (which can be used to browse through a Vault server), not the server itself. The only place I've seen the server software is in this post, which has a download to the 2012 (not 2013), and in the Inventor software boxes that used to come in the KoP (there wasn't one this year, I don't think).

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I believe it installs the servers, but as said, I have never tried using vault as I am the only one on my team who uses the software, so I have never tried this.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

This last season was the first season that we had more than 1 person doing a significant amount of cadding. We tried using autodesk cloud early in the season, which didn't work well at all. For the rest of the season, we had each student put their work on a team flash drive at the end of each night. This worked fairly well, but it was a pain to have only one person being able to work on the complete assembly as a time. From our experiences, there is no one good way to have many people working on the same model at the same time. Please report back on what you think of vault as it may be something that our teams would look into for using next season.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I am still having trouble finding the installation for Vault.

We used Solidworks last season and the only reason that we were thinking of switching was because of vault. I have found the Solidworks version of vault on the installation disk, but I am still interested in figuring out how to get inventor to work.

From what I can gather, only the vault client is installed with Inventor. What I am looking for is ADMS (Autodesk Data Management Server). Does anyone have any ideas on how to get this?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Vault can be really neat, we're starting to phase it in at work. I don't have too much experience with it, but from what I've seen, it helps a lot when multiple people are working on/with the same model.

Also, on the subject of multiple people working on different subsystems, having frequent meetings to update everyone on the design can be really, really helpful and save time down the road, especially if everyone is in the same place as subsystems start to get integrated. Also, On a few of the larger projects I've worked on at my job, we've allotted volume for different components from the beginning and worked out some part inference issues without even drawing the entire part - it really saves a ton of time.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Still confused on where to actually get the vault server from

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Agreed, the dropbox solution is not ideal for sharing CAD files.

In a work setting , I have been able to use SVN to keep track of CAD revisions.

However, most teams don't have the online size for large SVN hosting.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Any ideas for getting ahold of the server software. I found out that the Solidworks version is local only, limited remote access.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Reposting your question won't make anyone answer it any faster. When someone that knows the answer comes along, they can answer it.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

My Vote: Use Subversion! You have to set up a server, of course, but otherwise it is very convenient. Not just for CAD, but for everything that you need to be able to revert or share. We use it for the CAD files, software, documents . . . everything.

For those who can't use command prompt, there are lots of graphical interfaces you can download. For Windows, TortoiseSVN is very good.

It's a pretty nice system; you download and frequently update your own copy of the repository. You commit your changes to the main copy on the server that everyone updates from. Of course, if more than one person is working at once on the same file, whoever commits first wins. In that case, whoever loses the "commit race" has to revert and try again!

You can avoid such heartbreak by staying in communication with people and splitting up the work. We used a Google doc as a "logbook" in which people signed in when they started working and indicated what they were working on.

Read the SVN Redbook for anything I might have missed . . . I hope this helps.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

As I have said before on these forums, the integration between Vault and Inventor is awesome. The ability to check parts in and out while working in the context of you assembly is great. Even better is the ability to see what parts are out of date and refresh them without ever closing your assembly is awesome.

In 2011 Vault was included in the Autodesk software package included in the KoP. I have not checked the 2012 software, but that may be a place to find it. We stay a version behind so that we are training people on the same version that they will use during build season. I'll look when I am in the shop on Thursday, but if somebody else has faster access perhaps they could let us know before then.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I am at our shop looking right now, but did we actually get a DVD of autodesk this year or was it just an online download?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

The kit of parts checklist says there was an envelope from Autodesk (pg 7 at the bottom). I am not sure of the contents.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

To the best of my memory, we didn't get a DVD set of Autodesk software this year. I believe you had to download it from here:
http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=fir...12-LA-1-6-2012

We might have gotten a set of DVDs last year...its vaguely in my memory but not completely sure :]

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I got a free copy of the basic edition of Vault Server 2012 off of the Autodesk website from here at the beginning of the year. It would appear though that the file is no longer available, possibly due to the release of Vault 2013. I do still have the installer, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be legal to redistribute. Perhaps someone should email Autodesk and ask if the download link is intentionally dead.

My searching has turned up that there is no publicly available edition of Vault 2013. Based on this, it looks like you need to be a Subscription customer to be able to download it. If your team's school has a tech department that uses Inventor, I would check to see if they happen to have that access.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I sent an email to the education department asking for a copy of the server, we'll see what happens. They said that they would respond within 48 hours, but who knows

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I too was involved in a long, and ultimately only semi-successful search for a copy of Autodesk Vault Server. (Yes, Server is what you really want to do version control. The Vault version included in the Inventor download is just a client.) You can find the thread that ultimitely resulted in a Server download here. The only problem is that Vault Server requires either a Professional or Server edition of Windows (which I don't have).

I have had similar experiences with the terrors associated with trying to "fake" version control using Dropbox or flash drives. The basic thing I learned is that top level assemblies really aren't that useful, except possibly for checking for interference between sub-assemblies. If you can live with the "Cross-part reference failure" in the top level assembly, you can probably survive without version control software. If one person can keep the only active copy of a sub-system on their computer, you can probably keep the model usable. Not to say I don't recommend backing up files, just that without proper version control, two different people really can't make edits on the same part.

A quick tip, if you aren't doing it already, use Projects in Inventor, or the SolidWorks equivalent. It really helps with keeping cross-part references and assemblies in general working coherently.

In short, if you don't want the problems you have been experiencing, you need proper version control. There are ways to mitigate the fact that you lack this, most importantly keeping one designer working on one system. It just gets too hard to try to collaborate without real version control.

By the way, I wouldn't recommend switching to Inventor just because they have Vault. SolidWorks PDM really does the same thing.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Last year we used Autodesk Cloud (Now called Autodesk 360).

It mostly worked fine for us, except that if someone is downloading an assembly, they would need to have all the subfiles of that assembly as well. This meant downloading 50+ parts for a single assembly or transferring assemblies by USB.

However for modification purposes, like making lightening patterns or adding holes, it should work out fine.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Microsoft Dreamspark gives university students free server versions of Windows (with a restrictive licence).

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Thanks! This will be a ton of help!

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

The link found in this other thread leads to the download site, but the actual download link seems to be broken. Is there another place to download it?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I am having a very difficult time finding any contact information for Autodesk beyond the web forms on their website. Does anyone have an Autodesk contact for their team?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Yes. You should be able to contact the Autodesk representative who specifically works with Inventor and FRC at phil.dollan@autodesk.com. Mr. Dollan helped 1515 acquire a vault license, and should be able to help you.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Thanks,

Just shot him an email

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I received this response this morning from the form that I filled in on the autodesk education support site...

I am a little disappointed

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I ran into the same difficulties when trying to find ADMS earlier this year. Eventually I found that the only place I could get it from was from the Inventor Pro Suite disk set that came in the 2011 KoP. If you can find it, there's an install CD for ADMS in the back of the set.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Can FRC Students use SolidWorks PDM?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Well, there is certainly no rule against it! SolidWorks is not an official sponsor of FRC, so FRC teams can't technically depend on getting a sponsorship with seats of the any software. If you do manage to get a sponsorship, it depends on what software package you get. One version of the student edition of SolidWorks, called "Student Design Kit" does not include the PDM client. The other, "Student Engineering Kit," does.

Keep in mind that SolidWorks and Inventor differ in their business models for version control software. I believe the Vault client comes more or less included in most versions of Inventor, but Vault Server costs extra. In regards to PDM, the server software is free, but each seat of the client costs extra.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I recommend PTC's Windchill. It is 'web-based'/'cloud based'/easy to set up and great technical support over the past year.

I am not sure how I set the account up now, but can tell you the link:
FIRST Robotics Windchill
EDIT: The person to contact at PTC about setting up a Windchill account for your FIRST Robotics Team is Cosmin Pana - cpana@ptc.com

The best part is that it can be used by any of the most popular modeling software plateforms (Inventor, SolidWorks, Pro/E - Creo, Catia, MathCAD, etc) with free plugins directly from PTC.

Also, this can be used for more than just CAD revision control. PTC also has direct plug-ins for windows and windows office suite. Now you can upload and control documents without ever leaving Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. There is also a plug-in for MS Project, but I haven't used that too much; I am sure it is great though.

Part of The RoboBees have been using Windchill for a year as a test bed, but I plan to launch it team wide in a few weeks. I have been using the direct plug-in for SolidWorks for sometime now, and have had zero issues.

Feel free to contact me through a PM, or on this thread so others can learn as well.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

We have had experience using Windchill, too. It has been pretty reliable over the years. I definitely reccomend it to other teams.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Does Windchill preserve the parent-child relationships in Inventor or SolidWorks the same way the "native" version control system would? As I understand it, the really powerful thing about any version control software is its ability to update dependent assemblies or drawings automatically and seamlessly. I suspect that using a third party version control system (like Windchill) for version control with, say, SolidWorks wouldn't be much better than using a program like Dropbox.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

DampRobot,

To my knowledge and understanding of your question, yes Windchill does preserve the parent-child relationship. I will give a few a few examples from SolidWorks: I am able to update the sizes of bolts on the fly through configurations and design tables (generic -->instances), update a part and the assembly changes based on those modifications, drawings remain linked to parts for autoupdating. These are also available for Windchill for Pro/E (now Creo). I use Winchill/Creo at work and Windchill/SolidWorks for robotics.

The other difference between a PDM software (like Windchill) and something like DropBox is easy revision control. With a few minutes of setup by the admin of the Windchill server, user permissions can be created such that only selected people can delete parts, roll back versions, etc. In order to make changes to a part, a user has to "checkout" the part/assembly/document from the Windchill server. This prevents other users from changing the part as someone else is. Windchill keeps track of every upload incase something is needed to be rolled back. Then the part can be "checked in" for others to use. Once a design is decided on, the part can be locked such that people can download and use the part, but not make changes to it. If the part is changed by an authorized user, it will updated in all places that it is being used.

EDIT: Take a look at this link for Windchill for SolidWorks. I have never used Windchill with any software packages other than Pro/E (Creo) and SolidWorks. I have Inventor 2012 on my computer, and I will give it a shot as well in the near future. I would assume it is very similar to the Pro/E and SolidWorks counterparts.
/EDIT

I can explain in more detail some "library" practices in further detail if needed.

*Note* One thing that most people view as a downfall for Windchill is the limitation of only having the same name on the server once. Meaning if you made a part called "arm.prt" in 2012, you could never name another part "arm.prt". I would recommend adapting sometype of numbering convention that includes the year to avoid these problems.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

In the SolidWorks 2012-2013 Sponsorship package this fall we will provide SolidWorks Workgroup PDM. This is an easy solution to revision control.

You can do it now in 2011-2012. We created a couple of videos to help on YouTube. Here are the instructions.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D664170B28FCCDF

You do need one computer to act as the server.

Always try a simple solution first. Marie

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I know it was only released recently but, has anyone used Google Drive? I am using Inventor.

We are trying it right now for our offseason robot. I will post whether is works or not.

If it doesn't work, we will go back to Dropbox.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Yes, DON'T USE DROPBOX FOR CAD.
I had to redo our drive base 3 times, the ball lifter 2 times and the main assembly even more times. This was when I used Inventor with just two users.
Vault seems good for Inventor.
What's the simplest and best syncing tool for Solidworks?

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I use PTC Windchill. It is online based and doesn't require a server to be set up. See some of my other replies in this thread for more info.

It seems like SolidWorks is going to provide their version of this software this year. It does require a server though. I also have not tried this, so I can't really comment on it.

I really do recommend Windchill, it works great.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

Interesting, we synced dropbox between 6 computers/users this year. We never had an issue with syncing. How we handled it was:

-We split up the robot for people to work on.
-If they were gonna work on a portion or save over everything we made sure all revisions were closed by sending out a text or tweet.
-We updated a google doc as a fake "checkout"
-Also tried decently hard to work on it only in the shop so that did make life easy.

We honestly never had a problem, our robot did have a lot of parts this year :P

-RC

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

At the PTC Booth in St. Louis I was introduced to Windchill, and my preliminary experiences with it have been good. Although, our team does use Inventor instead of Solidworks; does anyone know if Inventor integration is on par with the level of integration that Solidworks has with Windchill?

We've considered using Vault, but setting up a server was too much of a hassle for our tech department due to logistical reasons..

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I will look into this for you and get back to you on it.

Re: CAD Revision Control
 

I know this is a step back from where this thread seems to be going and rehashing something that's been said a few times but I'd really like to see more Vault access available to teams as well.

Autodesk offers a great suite of tools to first teams, but without vault you're forced to manage your design infrastructure in a (pretty archaic) fashion (flash drives/dropbox)

I have very extensive SVN experience and use it in work and with our team, but since SVN has no knowledge of the type of file being stored it doesn't offer the same potential that vault does.

For any teams considering trying to use vault (or any other software that requires either a linux or real windows server) you can run a windows instance on the Amazon EC2 cloud for extremely competitive, hourly and usage based rates (very affordable to leave on 24/7). Amazon EC2 also provides tools to assist in backup and management of servers and I highly recommend for anyone wishing to host their own SVN server, website, or any other thing you would like to have running on a computer permanently.

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