Publish and Manage 2D PDFs in Vault 2018

PETER VAN AVONDT: Welcome to this Vault session. [INAUDIBLE] session about publishing 2D videos within Vault.

My name is Peter Van Avondt. I am a technical sales specialist for the data management and collaboration products within northern Europe. I am based out of Belgium, so a long way from here. Actually, but OK.

So I'm working for Autodesk now for about three years, before I was working within this channel for about 12 years. So I've got a lot of experience already with lot of these products, especially around data management and Vault.

My background, I'm an engineer. So I've got an engineering background. And I like helping customers, like you with their data management strategies. So I brought along my colleague Kamil. I think, Kamil, you can introduce yourself. He will do the demo stuff. I will do the talking. So.

KAMIL CEJPEK: Good afternoon. My name is Kamil Cejpek. I'm a technical sales specialist for Southeast Europe, Poland. I'm based in Prague. I joined Autodesk in 2011. Prior to that, that I was working for several Autodesk partners, starting in 2001 and mainly responsible for data management projects implementing for multiple customers during these years.

I also have an engineering background. And I will deliver live demos today.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Thank you, Kamil. Good.

Before we start, I just want to get some information for you guys. Who of you is using Autodesk Vault today? The majority, OK. That's good.

From those who are using Vault basic. Only one? OK, sorry for you but all functionality that we will show today will be based on Vault Work or Vault Professional. OK, that's important to know.

The second thing I wanted to tell you is about the hand out. So I've put down on the website the hand out of this class. I made it a few weeks ago. But as of yesterday, we have a new update of Vault, Vault 2018.2 was released yesterday. There is some new functionality in there. Also, regarding the PDF publishing, it's not covered yet in the hand out. Sorry for that. I didn't have the time to rewrite the handout, but I will do that later on this week. And hopefully the beginning of next week, I will update an updated version of that. So you will get all the information in there.

The hand out is broader than what we are going to present today. There is a lot of information in the hand out about how to set up Vault things and a step by step guide actually for setting up this PDF publishing functionality. Good. Let's get started.

Before I start, I want to talk a bit about my son. My son is two years old. Well I've got actually three kids. But yeah, if you would ask him what he really wants, he will say, yeah, I want some chocolate.

Actually, I'm from Belgium, you know. Belgium is famous for French fries, Belgian beer, and Belgian chocolate. So you can ask me everything about Belgian chocolate.

But he would ask, yeah. But yeah, what has this to do with this class, you may wonder? Well, actually, we ask you a lot of years ago about Vault what you really wanted. And it wasn't chocolate. No, it was actually PDF publishing,

So yeah, PDF publishing was, if you look at the [INAUDIBLE] station, it was the number one request from you guys to get it into the software. Now with the Vault 2018 release, we are actually getting there. And we are releasing this functionality to you. OK, good.

Now what are you getting out of this class. First of all, you will get an overview of all this functionality that we've introduced into Vault 2018 around PDF publishing. We will run through some configuration setting, some publishing settings, so you can get home and start configuring this whole publishing within Vault 2018.

I divided the cake into smaller pieces. So this is the agenda. First of all, we will give an overview. Kamil will give a short demo about what the functional team means for a user. And then we will jump into the deep and go and see how we can figure this PDF publishing within Vault 2018.

We will go through some PD of publishing options. So if you are publishing PDFs from your 2D drawings, which options do you have? And this kind of stuff will be handled in that portion of the presentation.

And then we will run through some advanced configurations, maybe some hidden configurations within Vault, that gives you some more value during PDF publishing. Good.

First thing, the new PDF publishing capabilities within Vault 2018. Actually, what we deliver is the ability to publish 2D PDF files from your inventor and AutoCAD drawings during your release cycle. When you release in Inventor drawing or AutoCAD drawing, an automatically task will be sent to the job processor to process this drawing and create a 2D PDF from that drawing.

The drawing will be published within Autodesk Vault, OK. There will be some options we will talk about it later on, where this drawing will be published in Vault. But that's for later in the presentation.

So what we also have, as an option here is to inherit the properties from your source while drawing. So the PDF file will get synced with the properties from the source files. This gives you the ability to search on the PDF file. So people who have only access to the PDF file will be able to search and filter down on these PDF files.

During the of publishing, you will see that we also have some options to set. First of all, these options are centralized within the products. So you will see in the Administration tab of the product that you can set some specific options for either AutoCAD or even to drawings. For AutoCAD, you can imagine that you want to include some layouts or not or model spaces. Also, the font handling for example. These are just some examples of what we can administer there.

For Inventor, we have some other settings, like the vector resolution, plotting line weights or not. And also, the stories [INAUDIBLE] PDF files, as I said before, can be maintained or administrative over there in the options.

Last, but not least, these PDFs will be published in Vault. They will get a specific category. We'll talk about this later. But as of this category, we can also set specific revision schemes, properties, but also the security, the security lifecycle, as such. So you will give some security to certain people. And they can have access to for example the thin client to these PDF files. So they can access the PDF files without having the client Autodesk Vault on the desktop.

Good. Kamil, can you show them a small overview demo of what this functionality means for them?

KAMIL CEJPEK: Now it should be better. All right. So let me show you first what is there out of the box from users' perspective.

PDF publishing is part of release process. So if you have your engineering drawings ready to release, then PDF should be created during this release process. So what I have here is drawing, inventive drawing, which is already in for review step. So the next step should be to release that drawing. So if I change state to release, and everything is configured correctly, and if I go to job queue, I should see here a new job waiting.

Now if I go to job processor, just to save some time, to pause it and resume. And part of our job sequence is PDF creation. As the result, I go back to Vault explorer, I should get PDF file.

Now Peter already mentioned that there is a specific design representation category for newly created PDF. You can, of course, preview your PDF directly with the Vault Explorer. There are also properties synchronized from the original file. And we have also revision index synchronized.

Now what happens if you have existing drawing? So let me show you this, an alternate drawing. So here is DWG file, which is already released, has already revision H. And I have also PDF already created for that.

So let's do short round trip from release state to work in progress. Now if you change state for your DWG file, your PDF still remains in released state with the regional revision index. If I complete the release process, sent it for review, and then to release state. Let's have a look again in job queue. There is a new job waiting in queue. Once again, just pause and the resume the chip processor.

Im back to Vault Explorer, just to update you. As a result, you'll get new PDF, with updated revision. And again in a release state.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Thank you, Kamil.

So this is the functionality that we've implemented. We are now going to run through all capabilities, all things that you need to know to set this up.

And so first of all we are going to run through the configuration bit off of it, yeah? If you looked at the whole process that Kamil ran into, you will see that we had that he released a drawing, could be from a work in progress state, [INAUDIBLE] to review state. And at that moment, the job process kicked in with a specific job to create, actually, the PDF file.

So there are actually three areas of configuration as you can see here. The first one is about your engineering lifecycle. This is the lifecycle that you have already on your drawings today. And there, we need to set a specific transition action. So if you transition, make a transition from work in progress or review to released, then at that time, the job is kicked into the job process queue.

And we also need to configure some extra security for the job processor user to be able to attach that specific PDF file to the source drawing.

The second area is the actual PDF publishing. The PDF publishing is done on the job processor. So as an administrator, you have to set up a job process for this. And you will need to configure some publishing options to see how this, the transition from a drawing to PDF, how this is conducted within the job processor.

And the third area, where I'm going to talk about, is about the PDF file itself, the moment the job processor pushes this PDF file back into Vault, you will see that it will get a specific PDF file category assigned. And this file category gives you the ability to assign a specific lifecycle with security rights on it, with the specific properties and the revision and so on.

So first of all, I want to have a look at this PDF category. With Vault 2018, we are having a predefined category already in there. Yeah, so this is the design representation category. So it's called design representation. And this is design representation, as you can see, is especially there for PDF files, but can also be used for other files. If you want to have other secondary documents into your Vault, you can use this design representation category. We will talk about this a bit later.

So it controls not only the PDF's lifecycle, but also the revision scheme, the properties, and so on. There is also a specific assignment rule here. The assignment rule is the design representation assignment rule. It's also pre-configured. If you create a new Vault in 2018. And as you can see, it has a specific criteria there, a classification is design representation so within Vault 2018, we also introduced a new type of classification of your files.

Maybe you know that or maybe not. We have some kind of classification types in Vault. For example, for [INAUDIBLE], you have got the configuration members and configuration factories. For actually DWF files, you've got design visualization classification. And for PDF, for the new PDF created by the job processor, they get a design representation classification assigned to them. So once you publish this PDF files to Vault, the difference with DWF is that they're not hidden files.

Actually, they are not replacing the delivery of files. We will still use DWF files as a visualization file within Vault. It's just like a PDF is for us is kind of secondary document that you create that you can share out your injuring department, OK?

Configuration is also made not on the visualization tab, but it is made on the File tab, just to distinguish between DWF and PDF files. OK, so important is this assignment rule. As you see here, classification is design representation. And for those who want to create their own jobs, maybe out there. So will want to create their own job to create, for example, step files or [INAUDIBLE] files or whatever, you can use these newly API commands. I have edited here, to be complete.

And the advantage of that command is that you can attach the file without-- to the source file-- without creating a new iteration of the source file. OK, it's a way to create your own jobs, if you want. OK, good.

So as part of the whole configuration with Vault2018, we have also a newly default design representation process, a kind of lifecycle for that. And what's so special about this lifecycle, it has three states, by default. But you can remove states, if you want to. But actually, the release data is the default state.

The only thing if you start out of the box with Vault 2018, what you should do is at your job processor or your job user, the user that is actually running your job processor to that state. So it has access to, at that time, to make modifications to the PDF file. OK, that's an important thing you need to keep in mind, that the security needs to be set for the chip processor user, OK?

I think most of you have already Vault in place. So what about existing Vaults? If you migrate from Vault 2018 or earlier to 2018. Actually, we are not touching your configuration. We don't want to do that. It's something you have to do yourself. You have two options for this. Either you go and import the 2018 configuration, which I wouldn't recommend, because maybe you will get some of properties that you don't want to. And so on. So our default configuration.

The best way of doing this is just create this manually. As an administrator, get into the software, create the design representation category yourself. You can name it whatever you want. There is only one thing you need to keep in mind is that you create the assignment rule, as stated here.

If you create the assignment rule, please bear in mind, if you have already an over assignment rules for your PDF files, that you put this assignment to on top of it. Otherwise, it will get the wrong assignment rule. OK, just that you're aware of this.

And then as a next step, create a design representation lifecycle process. Assign that to your category. Set to release state as default, because we are only creating PDFs on release. Yeah, nothing on the states. OK, just that you know. And then configure the access rights, as I said before. And then, as an option, you can assign revision schemes and properties, which we'll talk about revisions, thinking revisions and properties later on. So I will come back on that.

Good, Kamil, can you show them some of the functionality here and how to set up this in Vault?

KAMIL CEJPEK: If you start with new database in Vault 2018, all these settings are already there. So you don't need to touch them, just make some small configuration updates, speed dimensions. So if you go to Vault settings and categories, you will find here design representation category already created with assigned design representation process.

Just to show you a little bit more details. So there are three predefined lifecycle states, released work-in-progress [INAUDIBLE]. What is very important is that release state needs to be default 1.

For release state, if you use specific job server or job server user, just please make sure that the user has at least read and modify access to files in this state.

Very important is assignment rule. For design representation, you should use classification as design representation criteria. If you have multiple categories, you want to assign PDF files into them, then make sure that representation is in the first place.

Now for my graded environments. So if you started by default previous releases, as Peter mentioned, there are two ways. One of them is just to import configuration file, not recommended at all. The other one-- I'd recommend this-- is to set up everything manually. Doesn't take that much effort. So if you go to your configuration, just create new design representation category. In some fancy color. And then assign. Well, firstly, create design representation process lifecycle definition.

Assign to design representation. And so the only really important state here is release state. The other ones are optional. But let's keep them there.

Once again, for release state, make sure that you define proper permissions for your job server user to everyone, read only for job server at least read and modify. That's to this release state.

All right, so this is one portion of configuration. Optionally, you can assign revisions and properties. We will talk about this a little bit later. The second important step is to define assignment rules.

Always use classification and design representation.

Now because I already have a PDF assignment rule for PDFs to category other, let's make sure that's design representation is in first place before PDF, is above.

PETER VAN AVONDT: So if you fail to set the right order of this design representation rule, it will end up in the wrong category. And actually, we will see later on the properties synchronization or revision synchronization will fail at that moment. So that's a quite important step today to take there. Good.

So what we've looked at now is actually this bit of a configuration, the PDF fall category. So the moment that Vault receives this PDF file, what's actually happening with that. That's what we'veseen saw so far.

Now let's go to the front end of the process. And let's have a look how to configure your existing engineering lifecycle for your drawings to actually start publishing PDF files.

So there are two areas where we need to do some configuration. First of all, is transition your lifecycle and secondly, on the security type of the lifecycle. So the first one is actually setting this new-- actually, we have two new actions into your action panel of your life cycle transitions.

What need to know is, and I said it already a few times, that we only trigger this publishing when you go from a certain lifecycle to a release life cycle. Yeah, it's not that the lifecycle needs to be called the lifecycle state. It to be called released. But it needs to be indicated as a release lifecycle. Kamil will show that later on, where you said this as a release state. OK, that's important to know.

Then you will see within here within the actions, before you had only synchronized properties with the job server or synchronize [INAUDIBLE] few with the job processor. Actually, we have we've added two new actions over there. So you've got to synchronize properties and update PDF using the job processor or synchronized properties, update view, and update PDF using job processor.

The last one will also update your DWF file, your visualization file. That's the difference between both actions that we have within the lifecycle configuration.

OK, another remark I want to make here is that it's only support for files, file configuration-- file lifecycle not on items yet. So only for the files transition. So that's important to notice here.

Secondly, we need to set up, also, the right security rights on your interviewing lifecycle. On the lifecycle of your source drawing, why do we need to add this job server with modified rights? Actually, if you want to attach the PDF file to your source drawing, the job processor really needs to have these modified rights. At least modify rights. You can also give them delete rights. But in this case, I just denied the delete rights on this. Good.

Kamil, up to you.

KAMIL CEJPEK: Let's go back to Vault configuration. And what I'm using for engineering data release process is actually flexible release process job server. SO a little bit customized default process.

So what I need to do is for all transitions that are ending in the release states, need to update actions. So as Peter mentioned, there are two additional actions available now, since 2018. The first one, you will get PDF file only or last one, you will get a DWF file, as well as PDF.

If you are selecting for first time. So there was nothing selected before, just please make sure that you are not just selecting from dropdown list. But you also select it here. Otherwise, it will not work.

So this is first one. And the other one will be from full review to release state. It's the same thing and configuration here to get both PDF and DWF files.

Now in a release state, make sure that your job server user, again, has at least read and modify permissions and [INAUDIBLE] PDF is created only if the state you are making transition to is a released state. So please make sure that this option is enabled here.

PETER VAN AVONDT: OK, thanks, Kamil, for showing that out. If you have any questions, just interrupt us. No worries. But I think, if there are no questions, everything is quite clear now. OK, good.

Last step in the process of configuring this third step here is actually also configure your job processor. And then look into the publish options of your PDF files.

So as an administrator, if you don't have a job processor yet, you're within your environment. You will need to set up a job processor for this functionality. Yeah, you have to enable it into, you have to install it and enable it as part of the installation. And then you will see that we are introducing, by default, two new job types. Sorry, two new job types over here, one for creating the videos from the Inventor drawings, IDW, and one from for creating PDFs from DWG files.

OK, for AutoCAD drawings, we are using the DWG-2 view for processing PDF files, or publishing PDF files. For Inventor drawings, we are using Autodesk Inventor. And as of update 2, which was released yesterday, we also have the ability to install Inventor server as part of that installation or as part of the update.

So what's the difference between Inventor and Inventor server? It's not really a server. It's actually an Atlas Inventor, no UI is delivered with it. So it's faster. But what's the most advantage of this is the fact that it doesn't consume a license.

OK, so that's quite important to know. From Vault 2018.2, we are not consuming any license anymore for your Inventor installation.

For job processor, of course, you will need to have a Vault license. This stays the same. But for the Inventor part of it, it's not necessary anymore, OK?

Good. Configurations. So configurations are made in the Administration menu. You will see there is drop down there for configuring either the AutoCAD side of it or the Inventor side. But within the dialogues, you will see there are some common settings, some common settings. We'll run through them later on. And then some specific settings either for AutoCAD files and Inventor files.

Yeah, these common settings can be configured separately for AutoCAD and Inventor files. And that's important. It's not that it's a common section for both. But it's more or less, you can set that separately for both file types.

So talking about this common section, first of all, I'm going to talk about where this PDF file will be placed by the job processor.

You will have an option to, first of all, attach it as an attachment to your source file. As you can see here. So by default, this option is on. So there's always a link between your PDF file and your actual source drawing. And secondly, you can also configure where this file will reside within Vault.

So you've got two options there. First of all, it will reside just beside, on the source location, beside the actual drawing, the source drawing. Or as a second option, you can publish it in a certain publish folder within Vault. We are not allowing, momentarily, to publish these PDF files outside Vault. They are still managed within Vault. But it's just publishing in one bulk publish folder, flat structure. So we're not replicating structures over there. So these are the two options you have.

OK, next thing about the file location is quite important to notice about this. If you attach your file to your drawing, you can still move this PDF somewhere into, or rename the PDF, if you have the right to do so. As an administrator, you can move it, without even moving the source file. That's just that you know about this.

But there is one big but about it. Yeah? If you move it or rename it, the next time you run through the full cycle from work in progress to review to release it again, it will publish a new PDF file in the default location, with the default naming. Yeah, so it will not recognize that moved or renamed file. That's quite important to know. So my recommendation, don't touch. Yeah, that's how it is, OK?

And also for copy design, if you include your attachments into your copy design, this file, this [INAUDIBLE] file, will show up as an attachment over there, yeah? Make sure if you do a copy design that you remove it, because otherwise, it can interfere with the whole process. Yeah, we know this development already. And they were looking into it. Yeah, question?

[INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: No. so it's like, yeah. Well, actually, you've got your model. If you go to back to the model, the model is maybe used into your DWG file. So the DWG file is your top level. And actually, the PDF file is used as a representation of your just kind of copy of off your, carbon copy of what your DWG file is.

I slightly understand what you wanted to achieve there. But then your. Yeah, you want to have this as a kind of master drawing, like a master file of it, or it or did I say that wrong?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah. Yeah, that's not the way we implemented to it. But, yeah, I can--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

I can understand your points. And maybe it's a good feedback to development, to the PMs. I don't know if there are here. So I will give that feedback back to the PMs. That's good. Thanks. Thanks for your comments.

OK, next common option is about revision. You have seen that already in the demos, that actually, we are also updating the revision index or synchronizing the revision index between the drawing and the PDF. So actually, if you run through the whole cycle, it will automatically update this revision index in the PDF.

What's important, there was a prerequisite, is that you set the actual revision definition as a default revision definition within the design representation category. So that's quite important. So this is the same as your drawing revision definition, yeah? That's important, because otherwise, it will end up with the wrong revisions over there.

Good. As I said, make sure that you have the same revision schemes, otherwise you will end up with an error in your job processor. And it will also fail to attach the file, because actually, the attachment of the file is the last step of creating. It will create a PDF in Vault. It will update properties. But then at the syncing of the revision, which is the one of the last steps there, it will fail. The file will resides involved with the wrong revision number over there. So make sure that you do the right steps in that case.

Good. Then specific options for Inventor. So you've got a whole list of options. And actually, you see the XyliBox over here. This is the Inventor publish options. If you go to Inventor, you publish your drawing to PDF file, you have these options. And we exposed, actually, all these options within the Vault configuration.

So you can set up the vector resolution. By standard, it's 400 DPI, depending on how big you want to have this, or what your plans are, to publish this video for print them out. You can lower or even set a higher number of DPI on that.

Object s line weights is, by default, on. So depending on what you want to get achieved as a published PDF, you can turn that on or off.

We are publishing all sheets by default. So if you have a multiple sheet Inventor file, we are publishing all sheets by default, except for those who are indicated into Inventor as not printable or excluded from printing. So for those who know Inventor, you can have some kind of hidden sheet for printing excluded from printing. We will take that in account.

And then you have also the option to print or publish it as a monochrome PDF for Inventor files, with the exception of embedded images. They will not be printed as monochrome or shaded views, just that you're aware. There are some exceptions over there. But this is just the nature of how Inventor is publishing PDF files.

For AutoCAD, some specific settings over there. What you will see is that there is an option to set user page settings. By default, it's on. And it's not, at the moment, it's not exposed to turn off. So actually, what we are doing is using the last used page set up for your drawings to publish these PDF settings. So a bit different from the DWF settings, at the moment. So if you need customized page setups, just post it on the ID station and vote for it.

I think it's quite valuable, because it's kind of a limitation. We can't publish it as monochrome, for example. I know that's fairly used or asked for a lot of customers. That's a limitation for now, OK? So ask for it, ask Irvin or some other PM. Just beg for it. Yeah, whatever. I think it should be in. But that's my personal opinion. Yes?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah, let me be clear. If you have a page set up in your DWG file, your AutoCAD file, which is actually using in the monochrome CTB file, it will use that. et that be clear. But you can't enforce that. I know that a lot of customers want to enforce that, especially for monochrome settings, OK?

Include model space. Well, yeah, actually, you can turn that on or off. Include layouts, initialize layouts. This is a setting that you need for some legacy AutoCAD drawings. So if you want to get layouts out of there, just put initialize layouts always on. And then you've got the font handling, if you want to publish your [INAUDIBLE] fonts and true type fonts or embed that into your PDF files.

There are some options, as you look at the PDF publishing options in AutoCAD that are not exposed. There, we are just using the default settings from AutoCAD. So if you need some of the options, and you want to control them, once again, I come back to you, OK? Once again, ask Irvin or ask Eunice or [INAUDIBLE] one of the PMS, and tell them why you need that option in, OK?

But for now, I've talked to a lot of customers. And they are fine with this, just user default settings. It's all about. Yeah, we are publishing layer information by default. Hyperlinks are published for the bookmarks. They are published to sheets only and so on. So these are some limitations, small limitations. But I don't see it's really necessary to have them in. You had a question?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: So the question was about watermarking? Currently, there is no-- it's not possible to have that inside. The only thing what you can do is using the batch plot settings, or you can batch plots PDF files. And we've enhanced that, also, in Vault 2018. So you have [INAUDIBLE]. And you can include watermarks there. OK, so that's only if you do a batch plotting. If you really want that, [INAUDIBLE] vote for it. The rest of you. Think.

So that the actual PDF topic, I think it was voted for about 300 times, 400 times. So that was number one. So I think we are here about 200 people. If everybody votes for your idea, it will get up the stack, for sure. Good? OK, any other questions? Yeah?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah. Yeah, so it's a hyperlink. And then it's exposed as a hyperlink within PDF. So that's--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah. no, no, no, no. No, this is, yeah. So for it electrical, these are the [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah, it's the page connectors, page connectors for, yeah. This is not the case. Yeah. Yeah, for the server in it.

It's actually, if you put a hyperlink in your drawing, as a hyperlink from AutoCAD, an AutoCAD, that is published as a hyperlink into your PDF file. Good. Let's have a look at it.

Any other question? OK, good.

KAMIL CEJPEK: So all PDF publishing options you can find on the administration Vault settings and [INAUDIBLE] the first top configure PDF publishing options.

So as Peter mentioned, there are two applications to the AutoCAD 2D Inventor. Although there are some settings in common for both, they are separated, which gives you some extra flexibility if you want to treat DWG files a little bit differently. For example, you want to keep 2D, for many reason, you want to keep PDFs from AutoCAD in one common folder, you can do that without touching Inventor files. So you can set this up differently.

For AutoCAD, Peter also mentioned that page settings are used from the DWG file. That option is actually greyed out, so you can't enable or disable. The important thing is that PDF from DWG file also includes fonts. So if you use any specific fonts, especially as HX fonts in AutoCAD, then these fonts are included. So if somebody will open the PDF file not having these fonts on this computer, he will be able to read that PDF file.

There is also a sync revision source option. This is enabled by default. To make this work, you need to make sure that you are using the same revision schemes for your source file category and your design representation. So comparing drawing AutoCAD category using alphabetic index for design representation the same. And then [INAUDIBLE] Let's put it in this way, without [INAUDIBLE]

Yeah, so you see that revision indexes are always synchronized.

PETER VAN AVONDT: Good. OK, so we run through these three steps to set up the whole system. And yeah, you're off to go. You're ready. Well, actually, we have implemented. Also some other advanced settings, especially settings around the file naming, the PDF file naming. There was a lot of feedback from the guys in the beta program.

Is there a lot of people participating already in the beta program for Vault? Show of hands?

So we had a lot of feedback about file naming, especially by default, we are keeping the original extension of the file. So you've got always dot.idw.dwg.pdf in the file naming. And a lot of people, they didn't like it and they said, yeah, we want to get this removed. OK, so as a feedback of that there are some advance configurations that you can make. And we will run through that today.

Another thing I want to run through is about the property synchronization. I've put it that in the advanced configuration, because there are some advanced settings you need to make as an administrator to get this working, OK?

So first of all, I will look at how to inherit properties from your source file to your PDF file. Actually, what we are inheriting is automatically all UDP files that are set on a UDP, user defined properties, for those who don't know it. So actually, we inherited all the values of your source file to your PDF, as you can see in these two screenshots here. You see the alter is just-- it's all inherited over here.

If you want to make your content of your PDF searchable, just as a side note here, you will need to set up an iFilter, specific PDF iFilter. I've included a link in the notes, in the class notes, to an [INAUDIBLE] to our knowledge base, which explains how you can set up this PDF indexing, content indexing, within your [INAUDIBLE] server.

So as a rule, it's only UDP files that are assigned. So the drawing UDP files that are assigned to your desired representation category that will be synchronized. We are not synchronizing any system property at this moment, OK?

So what happens? So you have here DWG, AutoCAD file. And it has some properties. And the moment you publish it, all these properties will be synchronized. However, you will see out of the box that some of the properties will be blanked out, some unexpected behavior, I can imagine.

So what's happening, actually, out of the box, we are setting up also some propertyMapping from file to Vault or bi-directional, uni-directional. Like you have here with the comments, yeah, this comments field will have a property mapping from a file to actually Vault. And for the comments fields by default, you will have a provider here for the other files, which is actually all the files, like PDF, which is residing in this category. They will have a setting where it will try to push properties from your PDF file to Vault.

If you keep this in, you will end up with a blank property, because that property actually, that file property, doesn't exist. We are not publishing that to the file. It's just a synchronization within Vault. So that's quite important. I know it's a bit advanced, this. But you will need to remove that for all the properties that you want to have on your PDF category, OK?

So by default, we have that on comments. We have that on title. We have got that on keywords and so on. So you have to run through the properties just as a or an administrator, you need to run to the properties and make sure that you do not set this up in this way. As an alternative, if you want if you want to capture that property for other files, just create a new UDP file. And call it comments other files or whatever. Or make a specific UDP file for that, OK? So that's quite important.

It's up to you. Can you show them?

KAMIL CEJPEK: So to make it work, there are two things you need to do to have this property synchronized between a source file on your PDF. So firstly, administration you need to assign to your desired representation category properties. You want to expose from source file. So the best practice here is just to use the same properties you have on your source file category. Just assign some properties to your desired representation.

Secondly, and you need to make sure that all these properties assigned to design representation category, there is no other files property mapping.

So let me show you exactly what I mean by that.

So here is a description property, which has mapping, all mappings for AutoCAD files, Inventor files, sheet of data, others. This is important. So I have property mapping here, [INAUDIBLE] other files, profile property to Vault. So this is something that you have to remove to make it work. So just delete and [INAUDIBLE] it should work perfectly. And you should see these properties coming from source file. So to your PDF files. And then you will be able to search, for example, these PDF files.

PETER VAN AVONDT: OK, thanks for showing that, Kamil.

So the really important thing is that you set the exact same property on your PDF file. That's the trigger for us to synchronize these properties or to inherit the properties from your source files to the PDF files. So this is really valuable, because yeah, for people outside your engineering department with only access to the PDF file, you only give access to be the PDF file, they will be able to search on these properties. So they will have this information, without having to open the PDF files or scroll through the whole PDF file.

So that's important. Good.

Second thing, as I said, from the beta program, a lot of feedback around the file naming. So we've included this capability, also, as some kind of hidden feature. We blocked already about it. So how to set up specific file names for your PDF files. By default, as I said, it will be just a source file name with the extension PDF. If you do nothing, this will-- drawing1.dwg.pdf or drawing2.idw.pdf, OK?

However, we exposed the specific key into the job process a config file that will give you the ability to make specific configurations. So what you have to do, you have to go to the configuration file. So in the Program Files Autodesk Vault Professional 2018 Explorer, there is an jobprocessor.exe.config file. And therein, you can configure several things about the file naming.

First of all, we implemented to the removal of the extension. That was the number one request from the beta forum. But also, added extra functionality. I think post fixed strings or prefixed strings. So you can add any string to your PDF file, just a fixed string that you configure over there.

And as of yesterday, actually, we introduced also some new capabilities in the naming functionality for PDF naming. Actually, we can add, also, properties to the PDF file. So it was also requested to have some properties in there. So since yesterday, you can do this. So yeah?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

PETER VAN AVONDT: Yeah. I'll show you later on. I don't know if you are going to show it. Yeah? You show it later on? I will show you how you can do that. Good.

Important notes. You see, already, an error message popping up. That should be quite important, no? Good.

First of all, if you are starting to modify this config file, please make a backup. Yeah, and secondly, use a notepad editor, not Notepad++, because that's messing up the file, yeah? Or other editor. Just a plain editor. Notepad, it's not that complicated, the things we are going to do.

So yeah, if you're making some modifications and they are wrong, the startup of your job process can fail. Just a small warning. I don't want to scare you away with these kind of messages. It's not rocket science. But just keep in mind that you would take it back, OK? And if you do modifications after you save the file, just make sure that you restart the job processor. Otherwise, it's not taking the configuration, the latest configuration. Good.

What do you need to do? Open the job processor file, the config file. And then you have to look for this section. This is the section Configuration section that has everything to do with the job processor jobs for Inventor in AutoCAD. You see these timeouts values for inventor publisher and the TrueView when do we need to restart Inventor publish after 100 jobs and so on. You need to, at manually, a specific key. Well, it's not that difficult. It's this key. Yeah?