Migrating Autodesk Inventor Standards and Styles to New Release

welcome everyone thank you for attending today's webcast migrating Autodesk Inventor standards and styles to a new release our presenters today is Kevin Bosch he is a solutions engineer with Hagerman and company before we get started I'll let you know that you're in listening only mode if you have questions during the presentation you can type those into the question panel on the right-hand side of your screen they'll be addressed at the end of the presentation as we close down the session today you'll be prompted to fill out a survey and we ask that you take a few moments to fill that out additionally all registrants will receive a follow-up email containing a link for the recording of this presentation and with that I will hand things over to Kevin welcome everyone thanks for joining us today get a lot of phone calls about about how do I migrate my Styles how do I clear these errors that these these style conflicts so I thought just kind of a refresher over the steps to migrate these to the next release might be a good thing for for this webcast we're kind of in that season of of getting to the new releases I can't can't really say anything about what's coming up in the next month month and a half but you all know that this is about that time of year so but this this discussion today really applies going from any release to a later release even even some of the some of the very early releases before a different material library or appearance library will look at some of those things we're going to go ahead and look at what files do we want to keep and what files do we want to bring over and then how do we migrate those to that release we'll look at project settings versus the application options and which one is better which one is is is best practice we're going to look at those custom material libraries how do I set one of those and then how do I bring it forward each year and then finally those style conflicts that's that's the one we get the most phone calls on and hopefully we'll be able to answer some of those questions through the through the presentation here and if not as we said go ahead and fill those questions out well I'll be glad to answer as many as I can at the end so when we're talking about our design data the the dimension Styles textiles colors templates what what do we bring over what do we copy and what a what do we replace what do we want to keep as I said that that next release we don't know any exact dates yet so I can't can't go too deep into that but we know this is that time of year so when it comes to when it comes to the templates themselves sheet metal standard anything that is automatically in Inventor those are the things that we typically want to keep for that release anything that we build ourselves you can kind of see this 2421 IPT here and and I'll have some others that are in my template list those are the things that we want to copy and then place into into specific folders and we'll talk about those the default setup when we install our brand-new inventor this is where everything goes our design data goes into this users public Documents folder it'll have the the inventor release on the end there and then design data and our templates almost the exact same spot it's it's just templates instead of design data so those are the things that we're going to be copying or or using for our new release but then again we've got those custom things that we need to bring in and add to these folders we'll get into into project settings and verse application options one thing to note here is that when we set values in our project settings these are going to overrule the settings in our application options it takes precedent what does this default mean and it's a it's a real simple answer default means that I'm going to use the settings and application options and how do I save these application options out for other users we'll look at that process as well and then the content center I'm kind of throwing this in as an afterthought shouldn't necessarily be an afterthought but what's the difference between the default content center files location in the location of the content center libraries that's a question that I get quite a lot and have to explain so we'll try and look at that as well and what are the best practices for our our custom materials how do we save those out where are the default locations well the default inventor materials are located here in the public documents path the default Autodesk material library is a common file used by many Autodesk products it's not just inventors we kind of want to keep that where it's located but we can still pull things from that library and put them into our custom library and we'll look at that process and then the custom libraries as we create those those are saved in the same location as the as the default inventor material library and that file type is the a dsk Li B file type as far as clearing style conflicts is concerned earned we need to look at some project settings and we'll also look at the manage tab that styles in standards panel and we've got a couple of buttons there that help us fix these these little errors here we'll look at some common steps now it's not I'm not going to say that these steps will always fix these errors but we've got some common steps that we can take to relieve these and one of the biggest keys is actually reading through the air and what what is the problem what what do we have to deal with here so we'll look at this as well and now I think I can I can probably begin the demo here just a little bit let me minimize my powerpoint and pull up inventor and let's see here so the first thing that that we want to look at is our the the files that we want to keep so when we install inventor we're given a set of files that automatically get installed our backgrounds our catalogs this design data folder which has a number of different options in it some XML files as well as as well as our material libraries are in here you can see the inventor material library here at the top all of these things are new with each release and every one of them is of course placed in a in a release specific folder primarily is these two these two folders here that we want to copy over design data and template files and oftentimes we want to copy those out to a network location and then whether we choose the project settings or the application options we're going to go ahead and and set those paths in one or the other for each of the users when we have some custom things for instance you see that I've got let's see this 24:21 template here as well as this style conflicts IT IDW these are things that I made there's a few others within this folder that that I made those are the things that we want to keep so if we've made those may be those have been around for for a few releases copy those out separately and then place them back maybe you even want to create your own folder here and we can create a folder very simply we can move our items into that new folder very easily and then that way you can just copy that folder over for each release into this into this templates folder that makes things much easier when it comes to our project settings themselves versus the application options we're talking about these three paths primarily where is the design data located where is where are the templates going to be located and then those content center files where are those going to be located so with design data of course we can we can edit that path we can browse out to any location we want to again typically if we're in a multi-user set up without Autodesk vault of course we we go ahead and set that out to a to a network location same thing with templates same thing with with those content center files if we decide we want to use the application options then we can simply set use default now which is better depends on your environment you know if you've got a project file set at at the top level of all of your engineering files and everybody's using that that one project file it's perfect come in change your project file and it's automatically set up you change it in one place and it's ought to automatically set up for everybody without Autodesk vault if you've probably heard the the horror stories you got to be real careful because people can overwrite model files two people can be in the same file at the same time and cause some issues so if you are in an environment where you're not using vault and there are multiple users just be careful just make sure you communicate with everybody such a project path to to point to all of those this will overwrite anything that you've got in your application options the other side I'm gonna go ahead and say no to this for the moment the other side is on your tools tab application options and that file tab set those paths here you've got your design data typically you would change that path but it's also going to be in that design data path for the the new symbol library and then we'll talk about content center here in just a minute your templates path is up here again you can change that path as well as far as content center is concerned whether you're using this path here or you have a path set in your your project what that actually means what this is pointing to is the file location for any Content Center items that have been placed so any nuts bolts any fasteners whatsoever any any fixtures or anything that comes out of the content center when that model shows up in your assembly this is the location that it gets saved in well you can quickly notice that the default setting is my user profile that doesn't help if my coworker needs to see my assemblies because he's going to open those up and get this wonderful little error that says he can't find all my files set this out and you can set it for everybody set it out to a network location and that way as those assemblies get opened everybody can see those content center files this is considerably different this is where those IP T's get saved that is different than the content center path here this path is the location of all the databases - to make up the content center files so if we were actually to go there C Drive Program data which is a hidden folder you'll have to turn the view of that on believe that's Autodesk and let's see here in this case inventor 2017 content center libraries and you can see all of these all of these ID CL Z's are all database files that that hold the information to create all those IP T's that I need once again we can copy this folder out put it out on a network location and point everybody to that and everybody's pulling from the same set of databases so those are really the settings your templates your design data and where do you content center file IP T's get saved those three places the rest of this is is you want to match these paths up but again it's going to fall into that design data folder and then your your project folder is simply a place to hold shortcuts for all of your different projects so you'll just see those those projects obviously have their own paths this is just a shortcuts location so keep that in mind as well let's see so what about our material libraries well let's go in and open up a an IP T file here a minute and talk about those when it comes to these style library are these these material and appearance libraries obviously everybody knows you've got your materials on the one side you've got your appearance on the other you can switch between very quickly Autodesk materials or inventor materials pretty simple process and you can get to either the material library or the appearance library by these these small icons here a few different things typically I don't try to to mess with either one of these libraries I don't try to change anything in either one of these libraries they are changeable if you so desire you can you can go in and grab a material and change it to yours and save it to this this particular library the best practice is to go ahead and create a brand-new library and you can call it anything you want it will end up with at a dsk Li B file and now I can come back and switch to any one of these and grab a given material and add it to my particular library and that's really the best way to do this we'll add it to that then I can come back and select mine and you can see that I've added this and if I want to want to change that then I've got some tools for editing the different identity appearance physical settings I can do all of that right here once you have that what what truly happens is that that library gets saved along with your inventor library so when you get to your new release let's see here when you get to your new release this will get saved over I don't think that I saved that other one but you will also see a another ad SK library for your customer and all you have to do is select that one file and copy it over to the new release location and then it will also be available there are a number of documents and if you if you have need to do that with the material libraries there's a couple of documents that are out there that that go through those steps we can get you those just let us know and we'll be glad to to get those out to you as far as the style conflicts themselves are concerned and this is probably why everybody has joined this just to figure out how to clear these style conflicts there are a number of different ways to to try to clear these things our first one let's see if we can see if we can create one from here and that one was not found that's because I moved it to a different folder so let me let me clear that just a minute now when all else fails let's just restart inventor right well this is coming up we'll see if we've got no questions at this point I know I've gone through this kind of fast there we go and here's our custom templates folder that I put those things in so there's that guy and we'll see if we can't get one started here so here we go we start out immediately with the with the conflicts and it's important to read this this message talking about my DW differs from the definitions in the Styles library and the library definitions will be used and it shows that my dimension default ANSI parts list ANSI and standard my standard default ANSI are different and then this is the real key here if the style definitions in the style library are intended for the new document update the template with the new style definitions if the style definitions in the template are intended for the new document remove these styles from your style library using the library manager so very key to look at those and decide what we want to do do we want the styles in the document or do we want the styles from the library to be used and then we also have this prompts button so can we blow this away well you know in this particular situation as long as we know what's right we could say don't ever show me this message again and it wouldn't wreck Inventor it's not going to cause you to have to have issues you can always come back and make these messages available if you do this it it is okay in this particular case to go ahead and and select that option not to shell I'm gonna click okay and we're going to open this up and see if we can figure out what what is different and then most most importantly how do we fix it a couple of different things if I want to pull the information from the Styles library into my document then I have the update option if I come into the Styles library and I make changes for instance let's take a look at the standard setting this up I happen to know that in my my dimension set up the way I saved the document was to remove all but default ANSI so my Styles library has one thing my document has another another thing that I did was I came into the default ANSI and I changed the precision in the document so I know that that was one of the changes that was an issue and finally the last thing that I did was come in and changed my parts list columns and make some differences there so I've got two choices if my if my documents right and I know that my documents right I need to save that information back to the Styles library if the style library is right then I need to pull that information down and that's what this update button is for update grabs the information from the style library brings it into the document and lets me save it so I could do that and that would clear my air we'll go ahead and we'll go ahead and pull that through and sometimes I do this and it's kind of odd when I look at that there's nothing to to select here I'm gonna click OK and then the next thing that I'm going to do to clear those errors is come down to save as save copy as template once I know that everything right I don't have vault turned on right now and that's okay and there's my ID W so I'm gonna go ahead and save that and yes I want to replace it so let's go ahead and close this and let's see if that actually fixed it look at that no error okay now that we are here let's go ahead and make some of those changes that we just talked about so we'll go to the manage tab Styles editor I'm going to start with my my available styles here and dimension and let's get rid of this and let's get rid of that one that one in that one so those are out on the save and close actually didn't really need to save and close I could have just saved let's take a look and make sure that's all we see here for that dimension yep they're out let's come down to dimension and select our style and change a couple of settings in here I mean change precision we've changing its whatever we're going to do and we'll just save this one and then once again I'm going to do my my parts list and add a couple of columns in here say I want material and mass and I can add those in and I'll select OK here and this time I can save and close once again I've made changes to my my drawing template here but notice this is just a drawing so I need to do that save as save copy as template will come back and select this guy and save and yes I want to replace it so now I know my documents right I also know that if I happen to open up my document or use that document I'm going to get that error again so let's go ahead and close this and let's go in let's see let's start with our project settings here what we need to change in our project is this u style library equals read-only right now all I can do is pull from the style library I want to be able to send information back so I'm going to do that readwrite and I'll save that select done and then come in and let's go ahead and start a new one once again same air I'm gonna go ahead and click OK and let this guy open go to my manage tab now notice I have the Save button so now I can send information back to the style library and what I need to do is go ahead and go in here and make sure that the things that I want set are indeed set for instance let's see here dimension notice that was reset that a that error says it's going to use the information from the style library so if I'm going to make those changes and I want those to stick I have to make all of those changes and then I can hit save and send that information back we'll give a give a little bit of an example with that instead of changing my standard here I'm going to go ahead and change this we'll set it to 4 and we'll save it and close and then save and there you go there's my default ANSI and it's different do I want to save it to the library yes to all and ok and yes what I've just done there has caused all of my other templates to to have issues just gives you a little bit of an idea of how to fix those and drawings typically are the ones that we see most of the errors on it is literally a matter of checking the document is it right save it as a template and if there are changes then save those back to the library if the libraries right hit the update save it as a template and you shouldn't see those errors anymore now what about parts because we do have that happen on occasion let's try this guy and here you go well the colors are completely screwed up so what do we do now your best bet in this particular case this template probably came from something long before I want to say what the 2013-2014 release and in that time frame the templates all included their own material and an appearance information that was prior to the material in appearance libraries that's probably where this guy came from now once again I can click OK I can roll on I can build my models there's no big deal here what we're seeing when we look at the style library now is there's no material setting in here like there used to be years ago so what I would have to do or what I would do in this particular case I'm gonna go ahead and close this guy I think let's finish our sketch here I think this particular one yeah see they've got it set to mild steel so I'll show you what I would do go ahead and start new grab standard create set it to mild steel there we go steel mild they've got a semi polished file save copy as template save it as my custom template do I want to replace it yes and let's go ahead and close all of these and let's go into the custom template once again I'll actually we should start here know where don't have my sketch on there which I could have created a sketch and saved down there as well but that that is how we clear those errors now if you have things like I logic settings if you have certain I properties obviously you want to bring all of those over as well so make sure that you recreate those in your in your new templates that is honestly about all that that I have any questions any thoughts about this not seeing anything come through at this point I hope that's a good thing is there okay here's a few questions that are coming through is there a way to repair a corrupted style library Louis if you can get to two from from previous versions your best bet if you can get to a a new style library so a new install and then copy that over that is typically the best way there are some very specific things so Louis if you've got if you're seeing this and you have have a support contract with us I highly suggest you let one of us take a look and see what errors you're getting these things are real subjective I will say that so these are kind of some of the things that we talked about today are very common but if you've got some things that you're not seeing here more more information then then please let us take a look and and maybe we can help you work through that rich asked what are the best practices for templates in vault or network this again is subjective I have my my best my personal best practice is to keep things like templates and design data outside of vault and keep them in one network location that way you only have to change in one place my reasoning for that is if you do keep them involved and you make changes then everybody has to pull those down and that makes that makes things a little bit difficult sometimes so typically when I set up a vault I say hey let's put our templates in our design data you can have them on the vault server just in their own folder let's see here Viktor you can certainly try and copy your your dimensions XML out to the new version folder to bring in your custom dimension settings absolutely you can try that what I would do is is keep a copy of the of the default XML files that way if there is an issue you can always put those back oftentimes if you've already got a template set up what you can do is open that template explicitly save that information back to the style library using that save tab or that Save button on the on the manage tab and it should overwrite what's there and overwrite the XML let's see Network location is okay but if the network goes down and burner becomes very that is very true Jeremy you are absolutely right and that is that is kind of the the pitfall I guess of the network location you probably would want to keep somewhere a a copy of those settings locally if you're the the CAD administrator that kind of thing so there's there's always two sides to every coin as they say any any other thoughts any other questions rich says when when has the design data folder on the network via application options he'll get an air until the copy that is most likely because your project path thinking your project paths have have local settings set you may be able to go in and right click on those and set those to default and that will pull from application options even though I've created my own style ANSI comes up on some of the available styles Casey that is let's see here manage Styles editor and I'm in the wrong spot here let's go ahead and open up a drawing and I'll just do it from the standard this time notice I've got mine screwed up I told you I screwed it up that setting that that you're you're talking about where ANSI comes up as the default that is actually in these object default settings and you can come in here say it's your dimensions to settings we can come in and select your style in this list and when you do that for all of these whatever it is you know you may have you may have different styles for texture or Model View or theater objects or whatever you can set those is even though you've created your own styles this is where you said it's the default and those clear up so thanks Jeremy I appreciate that let's see here you're very welcome everyone any any other questions or thoughts not really seeing any at this point guys I want to encourage everybody if you are having your own issues you know different than what I've covered here please please reach out to our support team if you don't have a support contract we can get that taken care of for you it's not a very expensive deal I'm you know hopefully most of you guys do have that we work with this quite a lot and this is this hopefully will give you the information you need but if it doesn't we're always glad to help you okay Kevin thanks so much for the presentation this will conclude our broadcast if you guys have additional questions that you think of later you can just reply to the confirmation or reminder email you receive from GoToWebinar and we can get those to Kevin or your representative to get the questions answered and once again if you could take a few moments to fill out the survey we would appreciate it and thanks everyone for attending the webcasts and have a great day thanks everyone

Channel: Hagerman & Company, Inc.

Views: 3,381

Keywords: autodesk inventor styles libraries, autodesk inventor, autodesk inventor standard templates, autodesk inventor material libraries

Id: rPHd_VgBvoU

Length: 37min 50sec (2270 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 07 2017