Autodesk Vault Professional | The Mystery of Items

Are you looking to purchase Vault Professional or have you recently bought Vault Professional 2015.

There is a very important question that lies ahead of you…. Do you use Items?

Autodesk Vault Professional tracks the lifecycle of items used to manufacture products. The vault manages the files necessary to produce those items, such as CAD designs and the supporting documentation. Because information from the vault needs to be consumed by departments outside of engineering, the files in the vault are linked to items. When a file is assigned an item, a unique item number based on your company’s standard is assigned to the item and a Bill of Materials is generated that tracks the relationships between associated items using the file relationship information from the vault

Firstly, What is an Item?

Items refer to what your company manages, assembles, sells, and manufactures. An item is identified by its item number or sometimes know as a part number. Items typically represent:

Parts
Assemblies
Consumable goods such as fluids, lubricants, and artwork
Bills of Material

Each item is identified by its own unique item number (or sometimes referred to as part number). Items can represent a variety of things including parts and assemblies, instructional guides, consumable goods (fluids, lubricants, etc), and any related Bill of Material. Some items might be purchased, while others are manufactured internally.

The Item Master is the complete list of all items within the vault. You can switch to the Item Master view by clicking the Item Master group button.

So…. Do you need Items?
In Vault 2015 and Vault Professional 2015 (including R2) Autodesk have made it a whole lot easier to use items.

What you need to think about.

Do you use Lifecycles and Revision Management? OR
Do you use items and their lifecycle/revision process OR

BOTH…….

hmmmm interesting.

I ask you this, do you plan on sharing your data with a particular ERP / PLM / CRM / MRP or other business system?

Do non-CAD people need access to the bills of materials and other data about your Parts and assemblies?

Do you need some method of controlling what downstream users and non-CAD users can and can’t see with regards to your data?

Do you need or want Engineering change orders (ECO) to manage and track your revision and release process?

In the magical world of Vault Professional and Items this is all possible.

Come speak to a Cadgroup Vault Managed Services representative for more information.