Inventor, Fusion and Vault

With the introduction of Autodesk Fusion there has been many a discussion had, over whether Inventor was still going to be phased out or not. I remember a few years ago where there was a Youtube video doing the rounds where the Heads of the Inventor and Fusion product lines had a discuusion with the topic – Is Fusion going to take over Inventor.

The answer no. The technologies were aimed at different tasks. Inventor the workhorse of Inventor which took on many a great task and Fusion the new kid on the block with a fresh look and feel to help new designers get into the flow of things but not as great a scale as the Inventor models.

Fast forward from that day, my personal view of the 2 is that they are very similar at this present time but depending on your requirement I would still advise one over the other. For example if you said that a big focus of your work was Bill of Materials or Sheetmetal, I would definitely choose Inventor. The level of the technology in those features way surpasses the Bill of Materials and Sheetmetal in Fusion.

Yes, Fusion Sheetmetal might be more fun to use but when it comes to functionality, Inventor is superior. If you were more interested in using CAM for your milling and turning, then I would say that Fusion CAM is more superior than the module that Autodesk provides in the Product Design and Manufacturing Collections, Inventor CAM.

The sweet spot I would say is why not use both? If your team is focussed on different stages of the design, Autodesk has provided some technology that allows you to seamlessly share data between the 2 products without the effort of having to save as a STEP or SAT file or maybe having to save onto a USB drive and transport it to another workstation for it to be worked on.

For sharing from Inventor to Fusion, it is as easy as the click of a button on one of the preconfigured Inventor ribbons. As there are many powerful tools in Fusion, which are enhanced by the power of the cloud, it makes sense to use that to your fullest advantage.

This allows you to save time by having certain processes take place in the Cloud while you can go on with other work that need your attention. If you have not noticed, the Fusion Tab on the Inventor Ribbon has a generative Design, Simulation, Manufacture and Design panel.

When selecting any of the commands onthis Ribbon, Inventor starts the process where you save the file into a specific folder that you have already created in the Fusion Team (the workspace where your Fusion files get saved on the Cloud) and even allows you to rename if you need to for maybe a phased work approach.

Once the files have been uploaded into your Fusion Team, you can notify your colleague that the file has been uploaded and they will be able to open it up directly from withim Fusion as the Team in the Cloud is accessible to them. This is a fantastic and very easy way to share information and files without the hassle of downloading and uploading and hoping that you have enough space on the USB that you purchased.

Now many of you might be working with Autodesk Vault Basic, as it is an entitlement you get when you purchase Autodesk Inventor. This is great ,as this Data Management software works hand in hand with the CAD software and there is no other substitute for it.

So how do we go about sharing the data in the Vault with someone who is using Fusion and maybe, even sharing the files that the Fusion user has created with the Vault and Inventor user? First off, you would need to upgrade the Vault Basic to a license of Vault Professional. I must warn you that Vault Professional is a paid for license but it comes with some phenomenal enhancements to the Vault Basic software.

The next step to linking Fusion to Inventor through Vault would be to install the Autodesk Desktop Connector. You can download it from here. Once this has been installed onto the PC where the Vault Server software is installed, you can setup the Vault to start collaborating with the Fusion Team.

Firstly Navigate to the Vault settings by selecting Tools – Administration – Vault Settings

In the Vault Settings, select Configure on the Collaborate tab

Here we are met with a dialog box which informs us which Cloud Drive mappings we have defined.

To create a new definition, we can select New and are presenetd with a new Dialog box. Here we will create a name for our mapping for the Inventor folder to the Fusion Team folder. On te top right we will select the Vault folder and the Fusion Team folder that needs to synch. You will also be able to enable a manual synch option if the scheduled synch is taking too long and you need your colleague to et your designs sooner rather than later.

In the lower left corner of the dialog box, you can select the exact folder that needs to synch and in that process also select the sub folders that reside in the foldder you want to synch. In the bottom right of the dialog box, you have 3 options. General gives you a quick glance into the folder that s being shared, how it is synched. is it from Vault to Fusion Teams, Fusion Teams to Vault or bi-directional.

The schedule tab displays the time at which the files will synch, or at what interval(in hours) the files will synch or if it never synchs and you have to do manual synchs. The smallest interval you can select is 8 hours.

The Filter tab allows you to only select files to synch with a certain property. For instance if you have a component and you have created a specific property wth a yes or no value. You are able to specify that if that property states yes, then it will synch that file. For any other file which either has it and it states no or if it does not have that property at all. It will not synch between the two systems.

Once this process is complete you will need to make sure that the Job Processor is running. To enable this, you need to navigate to the Global settings, Integrations Tab and tick Enable Job Server.

The second part of the process is to open the Job Server from a PC that is running the Vault client. Please note that running the Job processor consumes a Vault license and it is recommended that it runs on a separate machine. If it is run on a machine where you are working on Inventor and Vault, it will use th Vault license that you are using.

Once open, specify an Admin account to run it and point it to the server that is running the Vault Server byt typing in the IP addres or name of the computer.

Once you have completed the above process, depending on what you have specified when you setup the definition, you can wait for the files to start uploading and synching or you can manually start the process.

With all the different software in Autodesk’s stable, compatibility is high on their priority list. So if you find yourself having to use both Fusion and Inventor with Vault thrown in the mix, know that there is a solution for you to integrate with the different software very easily.

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