Xref'ing from Vault

As some of you may know Autodesk introduced Vault as part of it Civil 3D 2007 product. This in my opinion has been great because it has finally given users answers to their questions that pertained to project database. Now our only dilemma is getting companies to finally implement the product, right.

One of the things that I was curious about is how the Vault works with Xref's. Since the users are taking the time to go through the attachment of their drawings to the Vault, what happens if the user wants to attach an Xref one of their drawings, from the Vault. What Autodesk did is give users a easy way of attaching the data without compromising the data structure. With the new 2007 palette for External References you may notice that by either Right-Clicking or from the Drop down you are now given a Log In selection. Which leads the user through the same process of logging into the Vault, in the same fashion as if the user did it from the Toolspace, in Civil 3D. After the user logs in he/she is given the Attach from Vault from either the Right-Click menu or from the first drop down menu in the palette. Once the user finds the drawing they would like to add to the current drawing they go through the same process as they did before, the only thing that they cannot change inside the Xref dialog is the Path type (Full, Partial, No), since Vault is managing the documents there is no need to set the path type for the drawing. One of the nice thing about attaching documents in this manner is since the document is in the Vault, the user is also given the same features as if you where in the Toolspace, such as Check Out. Which of course would allow the user to make modifications to the attachment, as long as the Vault manager has given the user the rights to make changes.

Now what I am referring to isn't some new trick that nobody new about but it is simply to clarify that it can be done. As I am doing demo and training I get a lot of people that are concerned about using Vault, and I don't blame them. It's new and it is completely different way of thinking compared to the way a lot of companies are doing it right now. It seems that most people are doing Data Management by using good ole Window Explorer, which is great. but we have to take a step forward and change with the times. Change is scary but I hope that this shows users that there is a lot of similarities in the software, meaning that the dialogs that you see here are really not much different then when you are in the Toolspace in Civil 3D.