PDM and Vault Implementation

[craigboez]

A few years back we installed an Inventor Vault on a remote server at a mentor's house and were able to connect to it remotely from the school, home, work, etc. From an availability standpoint it was great, but the speed was a bit slow, and I don't think the students ever really grasped the concept of the Vault and how to use it (remembering to check in was the big one)

For the past few years we've been using Dropbox to sync all our files in the background. We run into occasional file conflicts, but it seems to work better because a) nobody has to remember to do anything, and b) the speed is less of an issue because it happens in the background.

However, eventually the file conflicts pile up, and by the end of the season the master CAD file is a big mess. I really feel like this is holding us back from a design standpoint.

I'd like to hear from teams that have successfully implemented a PDM or Vault. How did it go, how long did it take to get over the learning curve, what kind of training did you do? Also, do you have any rules or workflows that the students adhere to, or general advice for a team looking to take the plunge?