CAD Revision Control

FIRST General Forum
#1

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?

#2

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=first_home&tagent=FRC-2012-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.

#3

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

#4

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

#5

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

#6

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).

#7

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.

#8

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.

#9

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?

#10

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.

#11

Still confused on where to actually get the vault server from

#12

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.

#13

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

#14

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

#15

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.

#16

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.

#17

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?

#18

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

#19

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:

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

#20

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.