Getting familiar with properties and behaviors

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Hi.

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The purpose of this video is to get

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familiar with the property's feature in Autodesk Vault.

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Properties are attributes associated with a file.

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Vault recognizes two types of properties.

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System defined properties and user defined properties,

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which is also called as UDPs.

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System defined properties

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are in the database created by the system which is then assigned to a file.

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User defined properties are in the database created by an administrator.

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The property can be applied to a file when it is added to a vault.

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In the Vault client,

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the property's grid is docked on the right hand side

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by default.

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The property's grid consists of system properties and user defined properties.

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You can select any property in the grid.

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And

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hide it by clicking the icon in the top right corner.

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To

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add the hidden properties back to the view,

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click the plus icon.

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Select the property that you would like to restore

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and click on Restore selected properties.

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And click OK.

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You can see that

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the property has been added back here.

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To access or view property definitions,

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you should be logged in as an administrator.

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Click on tools administration,

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Vault settings.

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In the Vault settings dialogue,

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click on behaviors

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and click on Properties button

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to access the Properties definition dialogue box.

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The available properties are listed in the property definitions dialogue.

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Scroll down to look for the property definitions,

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or use control plus F keys

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to invoke a search.

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Search for a specific property

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if you know the property name.

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We are looking for a property called Vendor here, which is not available.

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We will create that

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property in some time,

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but before that,

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let's understand

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the property definitions dialogue.

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The bottom half of the dialog shows the settings and mappings tab.

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For a selected property and also

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the category specific configurations

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such as whether a property is set to require a value

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to be case sensitive like upper case or lower case,

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minimum maximum length,

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specifications,

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and more.

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Click on the mapping tab

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to see the available mappings for a given property.

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New mappings can be created from here,

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or any existing mappings can be modified or removed by an administrator user.

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Now

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let's create a new property definition for an Inventor iProperty

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and see how we can map and associate it

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with files and Vault.

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To create a new property or user defined property,

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click on New.

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In the new property definition dialog,

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specify a meaningful name.

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Or we use the Inventor iProperty

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name as is.

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In this case,

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I am trying to create an Inventor iProperty

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based user defined property in involved,

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and I have specified the same name here.

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The value field can be text,

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number,

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boolean,

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or date.

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For our purpose,

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text should suffice.

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Let's associate this property with a file category called Inventor.

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You can associate a UDP with file category,

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folder categories,

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or items categories.

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Or you can also associate

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a UDP with links or reference designators.

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Click close.

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Let's create a mapping with Inventor.

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Entity class is file.

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The provider should be

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Inventor

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because we are creating this UDP mapping for an Inventor file.

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The file is in Vault

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so we will import

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the property from the file that is in Vault.

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Browse for the file

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and select it.

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The available property definitions in the Inventor file are listed here.

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I will choose Vendor

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I property definition.

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And click OK.

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The mappings can be bidirectional

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from Vault to file or from file to Vault.

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When

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the definition mapping is set to file from Vault,

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the mappings are read from file and can be written on file only.

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When it is

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set to Vault to file,

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then the property can be edited on the Vault side only.

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When it is set bidirectional,

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the property can be modified either on the

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CAD application

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or

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through Vault.

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The changes will propagate both sides.

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We will use bidirectional mapping in this case

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and click OK.

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The new property definition vendor has been created.

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Then close to exit.

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Now

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let's switch to Inventor and create a new Inventor file.

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In the iProperties definition,

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let's input a value to the vendor iProperty definition.

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Click apply.

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Close.

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Save this file

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in the local working folder.

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The file is saved.

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Switch to Vault tab

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and check in the file.

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Let's switch to Vault client.

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File is now checked into Vault.

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Let's look at the user defined properties here.

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You can see that

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the vendor property definition with the value is reflecting in the vault.

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Now let's see how to edit this file property

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inside Vault.

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Select the file

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and select the edit properties icon here.

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By default,

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name,

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author,

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description,

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and company property definitions are listed as columns here.

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To add any property that is not shown in the list,

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use the customize Fields option

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and look for the property,

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and add that to show the field here in the property edit dialog.

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Now we can see that the vendor property column is listed here.

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Let's edit the value,

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and click OK.

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A confirmation message will be shown

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that shows that

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the property edit was successful.

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Let's click close here,

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and

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open the file from Vault again.

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We will open the file and read only more,

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because we are not intending to change anything,

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but to

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check the property definition.

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Let's check the iProperties

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to confirm that the value has been reflected

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back from Vault into the file.

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This is how properties can be mapped.

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Property definitions can be created.

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Properties can be linked with the file,

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and those can be used

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for the data management purpose.