The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show

Dan Philbrick and Dave Simeone add their colorful and insightful views, opinions, and expertise on Autodesk Civil 3D and the civil engineering marketplace.

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posted 09/20/06 by Dave Simeone Civil 3D Project - Why Vault?
In my last post, I talked about why the “Project” functionality in Civil 3D is a way of improving your overall project and project team efficiency. So how does Vault fit in?

Quick history
Prior to release 2007, Civil 3D used a very basic project environment that was built on a concept of shortcuts (aka, references) that were connected to a project via XML. This approach worked reasonably well for smaller projects, but it lacked the scalability needed for more complex projects. That said, the concept of the reference objects proved to be extremely beneficial (as noted in my previous posting). One of the core requirements that we defined for the 2007 release was to bring the reference capability to the point that it could work with complex projects.

While all of this was going on, another initiative was underway within Autodesk. For a number of years, the Autodesk Mechanical products have included data management capabilities to help support the mechanical workflow. This functionality – Autodesk Vault – has been proven as a core data management solution globally. Its success resulted in a move to introduce Vault beyond the mechanical products with the R2007 launch. As you probably know, Vault is now available as a downloadable extension to subscribers of AutoCAD and a number of other Autodesk applications.

The choice became clear
As with any enhancement or new feature that we add to our products, we reviewed the options available to us. It quickly became clear that Vault was the foundation that we should leverage. It was proven in the market. It is being more seamlessly integrated with core AutoCAD. It provides the scalability to work with very complex projects. It provides a solution to companies who are working between multiple offices.

Is Vault something that will work for every Civil 3D user? Probably not – or at least not in the short term. Should your company just plug Vault in and get started? Definitely not. The reality is that everyone of you will need to closely examine how Vault can fit into your current infrastructure and workflow. We’ve seen customers who’ve been very successful very quickly and others who have had major challenges.

This is probably already too long – I’m still figuring out this blog-thing - so I’ll wrap up. The key points I wanted to get across are…

- Vault is the foundation of our project functionality and it’s something that you need to look closely and objectively at
- Some of you are doing great in this new environment and aren’t looking back
- Some of you will have infrastructure or procedures that result in very real challenges with implementing Vault. We understand this and we’re moving to address your needs. More on this soon!
- Don’t attempt to roll out Vault on your own. There are a number of resellers and consultants who have been helping customers through Vault/Project configuration and deployment cases who are able to help you. Leverage their expertise.

Thanks
Dave S

4 comments In The Dave and Dan Civil 3D Show > Project Management

User Comments

  • Dave,

    I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. ;-)
    Restore FULL functionality and development to Data Shortcuts. Return Vault to corporate with a note that says," while Vault shows promise it's just not where it needs to be for us to require it's use. R&D the heck out of it and roll it out as a real DMS product. Send the foot-soldiers out to market it to our subscribers as a complete solution. Make sure it handles ESRI and Bentley products along with Adobe, Corel, Revit, Structural packages, etc. etc. Make sure it takes a more sophisticated approach than just saving full copies of everything, a block level change approach.
    Make sure the client can back it up without shutting it down and can restore files not vaults."

    Do that and I'll buy it.

    John Postlewait
    IS Department
    George Butler Associates, Inc.

    BTW in reference to my last rant on your blog.
    Working folder down to almost 200 meg after some grooming.
    File store close to 2.5 G

    Posted 9/22/2006 2:23 PM by John Postlewait

  • Hi John - Rather than "swim with the fishes", I'll think about your offer...

    1." ...Restore Data Shortcut functionality...". We agree that adding this as an option is the right solution. This would not be a replacement to Vault - it would be an alternative way of sharing data. Vault is a great solution for most of you, but may not work for others.

    2. "R&D the heck out of it..." I can't publicly talk about things so I'll speak in hypothetical terms. Hypotheitcally we would open testing of this solution to beta testers. Hypothetically this could happen very soon. If you're interested in being involved with tesing this hypothetical solution, please let me know... soon.

    Posted 9/26/2006 1:12 PM by Dave Simeone

  • "This approach worked reasonably well for smaller projects, but it lacked the scalability needed for more complex projects."

    So in other words, a process that "worked reasonably well" was discarded in lieu of a much more complicated and intrusive one. I'm no programmer, but how difficult could it have been to leave the working process intact and create an add-on module for projects that needed Vault's data management capabilities? It took 6 months of evangelizing Civil 3D to get 4 separate departments on board, and 1 week with Vault pretty much changed everyone's mind.

    Posted 9/26/2006 3:13 PM by Shawn McDonald

  • With the new 2008 version, I have found that if you use Plan Production and then go into the sheet that was generated and attempt to use data shortcuts, the drawing gets corrupted and you get the "Drawing was Created in a Future Version" errors and lose all the data and C3D functionality. I lost a full days work because of this.

    Posted 6/6/2007 9:12 AM by Mark Hultgren