Cracking the Vault

Major Pain Points

I just wanted to communicate the importance of logging cases with Autodesk Support. When you have a probelm with the software that you have purchased from Autodesk, you have two choices:-

Vault 2010 Support for Windows 7

I have seen a number of enquiries regarding Vault 2010 support for Windows 7.

At time of writing, Vault Server 2010 will not be supported on Windows 7.

However, Vault 2010 Clients are supported and also the CAD Integrations for those supported by Vault 2010 and listed in TS14053691

Windows Permissions Required over the SQL Instances Database folder

You have installed or moved the AUTODESKVAULT SQL instances folder containing the database folders to another location other than the default. You would like to know what security permissions are required.

Ensure the following users have Full Control permission over the files contained within the mdf and ldf files used by the AUTODESKVAULT instance. The easiest way to achieve this is to set the permisssion for the parent folder and propagate it down to the child objects.

To determine the permissions required on a folder, navigate to it in Windows Explorer, right click it and select “Sharing and Security”, then click the Security tab.

(Default "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data")

• SYSTEM
• "SQLServer2005MSSQLUser$<COMPUTERNAMER>$AUTODESKVAULT"
  • example = "SQLServer2005MSSQL$FARA05261$AUTODESKVAULT"

Important!

When Applying these permissions, ensure that you click the Advanced button and tick "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child object" 

How To... Delete the Lucene Indexes and Rebuild them

Although the following was part of an earlier post, we have had a number of calls where we needed to give instructions on how to delete the Search Indexes and Rebuild them

Delete the Lucene Search Indexes

Delete this folder:- C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\VaultServer\Indexes

Rebuild Search Indexes

ADMS Console. Tools>Actions, Rebuild Search Index

 

Background on "Rebuild Search Indexes"

This command can be useful if you are experiencing slow or incomplete searches within either Vault Explorer, Vault Manufacturings, Item Master, or even Inventors "Open From Vault". Search Indexes are created by a sub-routine that Vault uses to index the SQL Databases. They are used to avoid having to run complex SQL queries for commonly used actions such as listing items or folder navigation.

The indexes are located in the default location "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\VaultServer\Indexes".

They can rarely become corrupted resulting in Error 226 and then Error 227 ("An error has occurred while indexing information for search. See the server log for detail"). Also, when performance degradation occurs suddenly, one thing to try is to run this command.

When you run it, clients will see this message displayed at the top of their browser. "The standard search results are incomplete because the property indexes are being created. Complete search results will be available once the file properties are fully indexed ."

How long it takes to complete will depend on the size of the database. the size of the database depends on how much information it contains and how often you run an SQL Maintenance plan.

"Open From Vault" Performance Hotfix is Released!

The Inventor team has released TS1109647 which addresses a performance issue when browsing folders from the "Open From Vault" dialogue box in Inventor.

Please go here to download and install it if you are experiencing slow browsing from the 2010 "Open From Vault" dialogue box.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=14014031&linkID=9242019

How To... Access the Workspace Synchronization settings

To Access the Workspace Synchronization settings in the versions of Vault that support it, you first need to click on the "Workspace Synch..." in the toolbar

It then calculates the number of files that you have in your local Worksapce and if the number exceeds that defined on the server a warning will appear.

Once the Scan is complete, click the "Settings..." button in the bottom right hand corner.

And this gives the list of available options.

 

 

 

Troubleshooting Performance Problems on the Vault Server

Whenever we are troubleshooting any performance problem on a Vault Server, one of the first things we can suggest is TS1073046.

This TS#  suggests running a script on the SQL database to Update Statistics on specific named Vault databases. So make sure that, if you run it, you enter the correct name of the Vault databases. It would not be of any benefit to run it against any Library database as these are optimised on installation and should be read-only. We have had some reports of this script not having any effect on performance only to find that the script had simply been cut and pasted from the web page without change the <VAULTNAME> value.

If this script does have a dramatic effect on the Servers performance, it is normally indicative of a poorly maintained system. It is not intended for this to replace the recommended Microsoft SQL Maintenance plan as descibed in the "Advanced Configuration Guide".

Assign specific Category to Content Center files

In Vault Workgroup, Collaboration or Manufacturing you would like to assign automatically a specific Category to the Inventor standard parts inserted from the content Center.

This is easily achievable if you set a Rule that assign the desired Category to files that have the property "Standards Organization(I)" set to: "is not empty":

This property is empty by default for normal ipt or iam files, but it contains the standard name (ANSI, ISO, JIS etc...) in case of content center files.

Check Out dialog box in Inventor 2010

Vault Workgroup, Collaboration and Manufacturing users notice now that when they check out an assembly from Inventor Vault tab (right click on the assembly > Check Out) the check out dialog box doesn't appear anymore and only the assembly without any children will be checked out.

 
This dialog box is still present in Vault 2010 Standard Version.

In Vault Workgroup, Collaboration or Manufacturing this dialog is combined with "Get Revision" dialog.
"Get Revision" on the assembly helps to Check Out the Assembly including all the children.

 

When executing Check Out command in RMB menu you do not see the dialog because, it is purposely disabled based on customers requirement. It is called "Quick-Check Out".

Also, if you would like to checkout more than one file, you may also Multi-select files in Vault browser and invoke Check Out.

User property value doesn't appear in Vault

In Vault Workgroup, Collaboration or Manufacturing you created a new user property called, for example, "My description" and you mapped it to the "Description" Inventor iProperty (or any other property).
You added the user property "My description" column in your Vault interface but values are empty.

First of all you have to be sure you associated your new property to the right Category (<Base> Category for non controlled files).

 

You assigned your Category correctly, but you still notice that no value will be displayed for previously vaulted files, meanwhile the value is correctly filled for new vaulted files.

You also notice that previously vaulted files don't have the new user property "My description" in the Properties tab.

This is because the already vaulted files don't know about the new user property "My description".
Already vaulted files need to be checked out and checked in in order to obtain the new user property definition and value.

I get a http 404 error when checking in my file

There seems to be a problem in both R2009 and R2010 Vault products where adding/checking in files of sizes starting with ~30MB and cannot be added to the Vault. The issue occurs in enviornments where ADMS is hosted on Internet Information Services 7.0 running in Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise, Ultimate) operating systems.

For example, a drag’n’drop of a ~40MB file into Autodesk Vault Manufacturing 2010 that is logged in to ADMS 2010 hosted by IIS 7.0 is blocked and results in the following error dialog (note that the failure event is not logged anywhere on the system or our vLogs).