Autodesk Vault Professional is a great tool for storing and managing your data but what many might not know is that it also automates creation of additional files that you might need in your downstream processes. These files could be STEP, DXF flat patterns or even PDF’s.
These files are important for other consumers of your design data who might not have access to Inventor or the Vault. STEP files would be used for the manufacturing of steel profiles and DXF flat patterns are very important when it comes to laser cutting your sheetmetal components. The PDF’s of your 2D drawings would be consumed by the Sales people or even clients who need to sign off the design and as previously mentioned do not have access to the Vault environment.
One of the mechanisms for Autodesk Vault to automatically produce these files is through a trigger on a Lifecycle state change (eg a file is changed from Work in Progress to Released to Manuacture) which then pushes the instruction to the Vault Job Processor to create the PDF, STEP or DXF file.
As you can see the Job Processor is creating a PDF from an .IDW file. This works wonders when you are trying to create many files as if you had to do it manualy it would take hours.
It is recommended that the Job Processor is run on a separate PC which is specced to run Inventor. This allows the Job processor to run through jobs as efficiently as possible.
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