When you are using a CAD application in the office is your server and/or network connection slow?  If you answered yes, and now have to work offsite using a VPN (Virtual Private Network), you probably noticed it is even slower.  To improve performance (or if you are looking for a better way to manage your files) then you might want to consider implementing Vault.  What you may not know is if you are using a CAD product from Autodesk (Inventor, Acad, Acad Mech, Civil 3D etc…) your company already owns Vault Basic.

I discuss data management and business processes with companies every day, and most organizations struggle with what should be a simple process.  Once a design is completed or revised, how do you communicate new and updated information to the rest of the business?  Often companies rely on manual processes that are time-consuming and prone to error.  For those companies that use Autodesk Vault to manage their CAD data, it doesn't have to be this way.

For those using categories and assignment rules in Vault, you may have found yourself attempting to find a more detailed way of utilizing the assignment rules.  You can always utilize the file extension for assigning categories, but what if files with the same extension can exist in different categories?  You could always search on another file property, but very often they don’t exist yet and going through the process of assigning them is often more work than assigning the categories.