Depends on what you require. You will probably find the vault supplied free with Inventor will suit your needs. More than suitable for standard data management. Doesn't control revision but keeps old versions. Do you require integration into your procurement system.. then may need to upgrade.
That is a very open ended question, which depends on your engineering dept. structure, how your design/engineering process works.
We use the basic one that comes with the software. I cannot express to you how it has improved our design process.
We have a small company with 8 engineers sitting right in one area. So we are able to work pretty smoothly since we can turn around and coordinate work.
The checker engineer is in another office, and he will tend to screw things up with vault (long story short) A) does not use the program correctly B) doesn't communicate when he is checking out parts of a project that someone else may be working on at the same time, without updating from vault . Then over writing someone elses work.
If you copy designs frequently or rename parts frequently, Switch to vault as soon as possible. It has dropped days out of our design process.
Nothing funny about that.. Started before 11, should be on the installation disks. Trial it on one machine first, and read up on the correct set up before you deploy it to your work group.
I am using the basic version also with version 11.
Be aware that it does some really funky things with its management of iparts. Make sure your file names, "member-names", etc are in order before switching over to vault if you make use of iparts/iassemblies.
