Topic: Civil 3D - Use Vault for EVERYTHING or Just the Bare Basics

[Dinosaur]

I am going to take advantage of this new influx of Civil 3D knowledge in TheSwamp with this question from my new position in the back of the room.  The problems encountered by John P. in deploying Vault on a large scale are legendary within the newsgroup and frankly, I have not heard of any successful implementation.  Vault seems to be an extremely heavy-handed approach to data management where a solid PROJECT management interface is what is really needed.  If said management included an easy means of changing paths from active design to an archive location I would be aesthetic.  I still haven't figured out how to do project management of phased projects or how to accommodate project name changes (a VERY frequent problem here) without major hoop jumping.

I am leaning toward a very minimal usage of Vault.  The only data shortcuts I used with 2006 were the point database, point groups and surfaces and I see no need to use Vault for any more than this in 2007.  I see no benefit at all including ANYTHING in a Vault project other than the basic elements that need to be shared by different drawing files.  The design documents and calculations for a project have lived happily in there own folders within the project without being attached by something like vault.

It seems to me that while Vault may be suitable for perhaps mechanical parts and assemblies with applications like Inventor, it is wholly unsuited for Civil type projects.  The last thing needed in subdivision work is a complete archive of every layout concept or submittal set for comments with all attached preliminary drawings and design files.  These plans were rejected for good reasons and will not be revived.  To store them is a waste of resources and to not store them seems to be a problem as well.

What are the implications of using Vault for only the few thing as I am proposing?  Will restricting its use in this way perhaps eliminate some of the problems being observed, or will they remain regardless?  What other words of Vault wisdom are there to hear?  For at least the 2007 release, Vault is the only viable option for data sharing with Civil 3D and the 800 lb gorilla must be tamed or this marvelous software's reputation is going to suffer even more.

[Jason Hickey]

Boy, you know how to ask the tough questions, don't you?   

Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're an optimist like me), Vault is the price of admission for using Civil 3D.    That's a direct quote from James Wedding, who I'm really hoping shows up here to discuss this one, seeing as how he's the real Vault guru.  FWIW, you can find all of his nuggets of wisdom (trust me, those nuggets ARE wisdom!) at civil3d.com.

HOWEVER, with that being said......

To know whether Vault is for you or not, I'd need to know a few things.    How many Civil 3D users are in your firm?   What type of work do you do?  Things like this will be able to help us out.

As far as calcs, spreadsheets, contracts, etc., there is absolutely no reason to put them into Vault if you don't want to.   It makes for a handy storage location, but there's no requirement there.   As you said, it's a document management system, no matter what anyone says.

For the design components (surfaces, alignments, etc.), I'd say that if you're going to be sharing them with anyone else on your "team", then Vault will be a good idea.    Believe it or not, right now, I can see Vault working better for the smaller companies (<10 users) than the mega-40+ seat firm.   There are things to beware of, things to know, and things not to do (for example, a recovered file after a drawing crash - DON'T DO IT!!!)   The issue with 2007 is that data shortcuts are broken.   Vault is your only real option.

I've heard two stories from trusted sources about Autodesk's stance on Vault for Civil 3D - story "a" goes something like "You wanted project management, we gave you Vault, it's what we're going to use from now on, get used to it, and make it work."   Story "b" goes something like "wow, you REALLY don't like this, do you?   Well, let's see what we can do...."

Make your own assumptions.   

[Dinosaur]

I figure "why toss out softballs while the pro's are in town."

Just so you know better where I am coming from . . . I could be the prototype "Lone Wolf" from Dana Breig Probert's fine essay.  Resistance to Civil 3D in our office was so high in early 2006 that I had to arrange for training piggybacked into another companies class, all on my own nickle and vacation time because the 3 day session was several hundred miles away from my home.  I WANTED that training desperately and have never regretted the effort it took to get it.  I am still the only one in our small office that uses Civil 3D except for the engineer who insist on creating any design surface in the office himself.  We collaborate on the corridor and then I am on my own for the rest of any Civil 3D project.
Even though there are no other users sharing the data, I have several different drawings sharing it.  I prefer to have separate drawings for each of the street, sanitary, storm, water and grading sets with an xref to a non C3D layout sheet.  with 2006, I had data shortcuts to the objects I needed in the design model.  Much of this procedure is due to the wholly undisciplined drafting methods and layer management of the ITwit as it allows me to keep a betterr grip on the plotted output at any given time.


-EDIT-

fixed link to article

[jpostlewait]

Morning Dino,

Yikes " The problems encountered by John P. in deploying Vault on a large scale are legendary within the newsgroup and frankly, I have not heard of any successful implementation."

Probably shouldn't use the term Legendary when refering to my efforts.
A few late night e-mails to Jason among others is closer to the stuff of legend.

Implementing this product, training the users, setting up Vault, familiarizing the users with what kind of a curveball that is, and then trying to do the rest of what I have to do is a bit of a chore. Just reread this and I don't want to leave the impression that I am doing much of any of this stuff myself.  We are making progress. It's just slower and more expensive, in my opinion, than it should be. Autodesk is woefully lacking in providing any assistance other than to say, "You better go hire somebody to help you."

I have hired the Best, again in my opinion, and I can't imagine what I would do without him.

I'll try to check-in more often. Must get number of post's infront of Jason's.

[Dinosaur]

I will stand by my description . . . those threads are   L  O  N  G   and crammed full of things you and others have suggested and tried that don't work.  You are in the middle of probably the largest scale deployment of Civil 3D anywhere and identifying for the first time even for Manchester, some of the areas that it just doesn't do the job yet.  I just introduced this topic to see whether or not everyone was just expecting Vault to do too much.  I am content to use it as I have outlined although I think the Data shortcuts were better for my needs, but I think expecting it to do project management is asking it to do some things it was not designed for.  Some of the things I am curious about is how  Vault addresses archiving and phased projects.  When a project or phase has been built, but data and drawings must still be accessible, where can they go?  Do they just have to remain in the project list indefinitely?  I am on the other end of the spectrum with zero other users.  What I do have is about a dozen active Civil 3D projects which I would wager is near the top in that category.  I am seeing massive slowdowns whenever I work within a project environment when compared doing the same tasks when the drawing has been detached from the project.  File monitoring shows me Civil 3D doing an almost constant parsing through every project xml file whenever editing a drawing attached to a project and there seems to be little difference between master mode and active drawing mode.  If this behavior still occurs with Vault, I expect the slowdowns to increase with every new project unless there is an archival ability to get dead projects out of the system but still accessable.

[jpostlewait]

VAULT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK got that somewhat out of my system.
Did I say PRIMITIVE, BROKEN, SCREWED UP PRODUCT THAT WAS BAND-AIDED ON TO CIVIL3D.
No I didn't really say that, did I?
I really don't know.
I'm telling everybody, better be prepared to swim in deep water if you want this stuff on the floor.

John Postlewait
IS Department
George Butler Associates, Inc.

[Dinosaur]

Well, I am certainly glad you were cautious with your response because you post under your real name and with your corporate header!

Well said, I could not have put it better myself - probably because you have been living with the 800 lb gorilla for several months now.  It is frustrating that they trotted out this turkey on top of some very significat additions to Civil 3D, giving us no choice other than take Vault or not get to play with any of the new toys.

[jpostlewait]

Hopefully the CEO doesn't know where the Swamp is.

BTW the CEO is a fanboy.
I convinced him that this is the direction of the future.
See the post about my neck on the line.
Anyway I may document my implementation adventure soon.

John P.

[Dinosaur]

I hope my boss never finds TheSwamp either . . .

[dgreble]

I will attempt to ease into the water with a hypothetical situation:

A small firm, 3-4 C3D users are getting by with 2006 for residential subdivision and some site plan work.  The current hardware is trembling and major changes are on the way.  The calendar is marked for days to close the office for major computer/server upgrades.  Along with the hardware comes C3D 2007 software.  There are major projects out the door at various stages ranging from preliminary plans to construction plans.  The dream scenario is to come to the office, turn on new computers, load new software and pick up projects and run without any headaches.  Does one vault or not vault?

[Dinosaur]

Is there any way to keep 2006 available for at least the construction plan phased projects?  2007 presented some problems loading up 2006 drawings in 2007 at first.  I don't remember if the service packed stopped all of that or not.  My choice in that situation would be install 2006 on all of the new machines and 2007 on one.  Even better, put the 2007 on a virtual machine on all of the computers for everyone to try out when time permits.  Keep all of the active projects in 2006 for now and use a clone of one of the preliminary stage ones as a pilot project in 2007.  The thing most important to remember is there is no effective way to take a 2007 drawing back down to 2006 without some major rehashing things from XML files.  Going backward will likely cost as much time as it would take to slog it through in 2007.  Eventually, even if 2007 is dealing tremendous fits, I am thinking as the number of projects grows, I think Vault will be mandatory (unless 2008 or 2*** brings a pleasant surprise for real project management).

[jpostlewait]

I will attempt to ease into the water with a hypothetical situation:

A small firm, 3-4 C3D users are getting by with 2006 for residential subdivision and some site plan work.  The current hardware is trembling and major changes are on the way.  The calendar is marked for days to close the office for major computer/server upgrades.  Along with the hardware comes C3D 2007 software.  There are major projects out the door at various stages ranging from preliminary plans to construction plans.  The dream scenario is to come to the office, turn on new computers, load new software and pick up projects and run without any headaches.  Does one vault or not vault?

You didn't mention anything about training.
And unfortunately dreams sometimes don't come true.
Vault changes everything you used to know as referencing doesn't work except through Vault.
If you try it without it you will need to reconnect every time you open a file.
I am taking a Sabbatical from editorializing upon the advise of a friend.
But you need to do some quick research if the Date is carved in stone.

John Postlewait
IS Department
George Butler Associates, Inc.

[Dinosaur]

A major problem when considering Vault is WHERE you are going to let it live.  I think that is has been determined that it will work best on a server (preferably its own if at all possible) rather than locally on individual machines.  Whoever is making the decisions on the upgrades should really try to get a handle for what Vault requires in both resources and management before any decisions are made.

[MMccall]

My needs for data sharing are fairly minimal as well so I paid little attention to the announcement of vault ... until I read that data shortcuts no longer functioned as they did in 06. There's no good reason for doing that. I think it was an intentionally move just the force people to use vault if they want to share data because they knew we wouldn't like vault.  It's more borrowed square code pounded into our round civil hole. I don't like being jerked around like like that. Holding back on my subscription is all i have to bargin with so that's what I'm doing.  .. and that's my thoughts on vault.

However, I installed a trial copy of 07 to see if there is enough new, and useful, stuff for me to overcome the 'bend over, here comes vault' tactics.

[Dinosaur]

You may not want to be too harsh on Autodesk for this one just yet.  In the first post on this thread I described a dramatic slowdown in performance editing project based drawings as my number of projects increased.  Essentially it appears from my file monitoring that Civil 3D 2006 is continuously parsing through ALL project XML files when editing a drawing attached to any project.  If the drawing is detached, the same operations produce zero performance loss.
I am wondering if this has become known in Manchester as some customers started having a larger set of projects stored and they had no solution handy except to push Vault.  As I read more about Vault and how it manages the data sharing and using local copies of the drawings, I think Vault will prevent this from happening.  If I am correct in this, I would INSIST that Vault be available for 2007 drawings at least and until a different solution is available.