Product Data Management: AutoCAD and Autodesk Vault

Introduction:
In this new article we are going to talk about how we work with AutoCAD in an installation of Autodesk Vault.
We’ll also see the work with other types of non-CAD files.

To see the previous article, you can click on the following link: Product Data Management: ¿What is Autodesk Vault like?

Autodesk Vault and non-CAD files
As we mentioned in our previous notes, Autodesk Vault allows us to work with different file types.
These files are design files mainly (commonly known as CAD files). But when we are working on a design project, there are, in addition to the design files, other files that aren’t drawings or models. These files are called non-CAD.
The non-CAD files can be of the most diverse: calculation memories, bills of materials, information to make modifications or improvements, reports of surveys, dimensional reports, pictures of problems detected in the field, and a long list of etceteras. These files can be in the most diverse formats: DOC or DOCX (Microsoft Word), XLS or XLSX (Microsoft Excel), PPT (Microsoft Power Point), PDF, JPG, PNG, and others not so common and quite frequent as reports of simulation, numerical control programs.
Autodesk Vault can work with all these file types, since the main idea of the application is to be able to have all the information related to a certain design or project in one place.
Next, we show in a video how we can work with these files.

Note: The audio of the video is in Spanish, but captions can be activated in your preferred language, selecting the button with “CC“

Autodesk Vault and AutoCAD files
Starting with the proper drawing files, we will see how AutoCAD works in Autodesk Vault, showing in a video some examples in different situations: when creating a new drawing and using external references (XRef) in both 2D and 3D.
Note that when we talk about AutoCAD files, we not only refer to files made with the AutoCAD application only, but the concept is broader, since we are talking about DWG files, either created with AutoCAD or some other product that use the same extension:

AutoCAD
AutoCAD Architecture
AutoCAD Civil 3D
AutoCAD Electrical
AutoCAD Mechanical
AutoCAD MEP
AutoCAD P&ID
AutoCAD Plant 3D
… and some others.

Depending on the application, Autodesk Vault will consider some different things. For example: when we are working with AutoCAD Electrical files, it is taken into account that the projects in this application use a project file and other auxiliary files, so Autodesk Vault will work with this in mind to maintain the set of files, both drawing as the project and the auxiliaries.
The same happens with AutoCAD Civil 3D files, in which most of the time there are image files, with TIFF extension, that are part of the design. In this case Autodesk Vault also considers these files as part of the drawing file.

Note: The audio of the video is in Spanish, but captions can be activated in your preferred language, selecting the button with “CC“

As we have seen, working with Autodesk Vault helps us to organize our work and make the saving of the files much more efficient.
This is especially invaluable when working in an environment in which many people work and, in addition, allows us to have more than one person working on the same project simultaneously, which translates into an improvement in the productivity of the work team. Not to mention the drastic reduction of errors that this implies.