Can VAULT work with Sheet Set Manager (SSM)? Well........ not really! But if everything worked, there would be no reason for "work-arounds".

This is really Part 3 of the proposed workflow for Vault. I had this in my brain for awhile but did not find the time to blog it.

First, if you commit a Plan Set Drawing (Sheet File) to Vault, or multiple Plan Set drawings for a given project to Vault, you cannot leverage the Sheet Set Manager to check-in and check-out those files. As you probably know, once you commit a drawing to Vault, you need to utilize the check-in and check-out features as opposed to opening and closing the drawings. When you access drawings through SSM, you are opening and closing. If you try to create a Sheet Set from Plan Set Drawings that have been committed to Vault, it is nearly impossible. I haven't tried, but I really don't want to. As you may know, Vault is document management system for our engineering data, and the way it stores the drawing files and names the drawings makes it impossible to create a Sheet Set from those drawings committed to Vault.

The work-around... Don't commit your Plan Set drawings to Vault. When I first thought about this, I figured this would not be a solution because I assumed if you want to reference (through Data References) Civil 3D objects like Alignments and Surfaces into the Plan Set file, then the Plan Set drawings must be attached to the same project as the Alignments and Surfaces... I assumed incorrectly. As it turns out, you can access the data from any project into any project anytime you like. In fact, even if you have a drawing (in this case a Plan Set drawing) NOT attached to a project in Vault, meaning it is NOT committed to Vault at all, you can still access any data from any project. Some of us are skeptical if this was done purposefully or accidentally by Autodesk. Hopefully they don't "fix" this, which essentially breaks it!

Additionally, if you add the data references into the Plan Set files that are NOT committed to Vault, even though the design files that contain those Alignments, Profiles, and Surfaces are added to Vault, if changes are made to those design objects, you will be notified that they need to be synchronized through the prospector in Civil 3D within the Plan Set files. Did that make sense? In other words, they dynamics of objects between DWG files still work when you use the Data References. Now you can keep your Plan Set drawings independent of Vault in order to leverage the Great capabilities of Sheet Set Manager.

I hope this helps… please let me know if you have any questions or if I missed anything that comes to mind.

Posted by DannyCounts @ 7:10 AM
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Posted by  DannyCounts : 10:23 PM
Rebecca,

I would have two answers for that because you might want to reference a file that resides in Vault or a file that doesn’t reside in Vault.

I apologize I don't have Civil 3D available for screen captures, but through the External Reference Palette, you have the option to "Attach from Vault" which will allow you to preserve the file structure of Vault. Once the drawing is Xref'd in by Attaching from Vault, you will also see in the External Reference palette a check in and check out feature.

If/when you decide to Xref drawings in to your current drawing that is in Vault but where the Xref'd drawing is not in Vault, you would of course just Xref this in the normal way. However, this is where you may need to consider the previous workflow presented.

Here are a few different workflow alternatives...

WF1: This is the original one presented. You can reference in the Alignment and Profiles through "Data References" not Xrefs, directly into the Plan Sets. This would allow you to stylize your alignments and profiles anyway you like within the Plan Sets.

WF2: Xref in a drawing that contains your alignments and your drawing that contains your profiles. IN this scenario, you should seriously consider the "one object" per drawing method, because you would have some Plan Set files that would have many Xrefs in them. So instead, you could store all your alignments in one file so you can just Xref the one file. In this case, the Stylization of the Alignments would have to be in the original file and it could prove more difficult to control the visibility of the C3D objects, if they reside in an Xref.
 

Posted by  DannyCounts : 6:52 AM
It turns out the Attach from Vault is only available in normal AutoCAD, this is quite the BUMMER, it is not available through the XREF manager in Civil 3D. Someone is working on a work-around for this where I will have some more info soon, I hope.