CAD Revision Control

[lynca]

Originally Posted by baronep

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.

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

Originally Posted by baronep

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

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.

[baronep]

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

[Madison]

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

[the.miler]

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.

[kramarczyk]

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 Even better is the ability to see what parts are out of date and refresh them without ever closing your assembly is awesome.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.

[baronep]

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?

[kramarczyk]

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

[aboppana]

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

[Radical Pi]

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.

[baronep]

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

[DampRobot]

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.

[Ankit S.]

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.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

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).

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

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Tristan Lall

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

Thanks! This will be a ton of help!

[baronep]

Originally Posted by DampRobot

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 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?