We're expanding - any tips?

[trainguy]

Hi all.

Our office is about to undergo a somewhat major overhaul. We are going from an Acad2000 (4 single users, not much collaboration) based office with 1 Inventor 8 station, to a multiple user (say 7 users) Inventor group, working on 2-3 small projects at the same time.

Our "network" is a bunch of Windows 98SE machines wired together thru 10 Mbps routers.

Does anyone have any tips for making this transformation less painful? The hardware/software concerns are manageable, but I'm really intimidated by the idea of many users using common assemblies, file management, backups etc.

Do we need monitors larger than 19"?

Any tips would be appreciated.



tg

 

[SeanDotson]

Look into Autodek Vault (you can get it if you are on subscription)

Sean Dotson, PE
Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert

http://www.sdotson.com

Autodesk Inventor Tutorials & More

 

[anoc]

You should get some inventor professional to get you going with stuff (you have to decide how to fill ipt fields and so on and so on. No inventor course can prepare you that!

 

[rushdl]

Vault is good or Cyco Meridian for more document management and control.

 

[aepeszel]

I would go with a 24" mointor and space mouse for each station

 

[rft]

sorry not to have replied earlier - been on holiday.

Far and away the most important task is to read the Project and file management document on disk#1 of AIS8 CD.

If this leaves you totally confused you will need professional advise.

ps many of the professionals are confused as well
ralph

 

[autocol]

and for goodness sake... get RID of win98!!!

 

[knobhead]

If you can, I'd use this to get a wishlist together.

Essentials though:

Ditch Win98, you'll have no end of problems with that. Go WinXP Pro.

You need a document control system of some sort. Inventor's own arrangement, Vault, would probably be simplest for you.

You can never have a monitor big enough. 19" is the minimum for CAD work. Twin monitor setups are the best - I use a 19" and an old 15" together.

Decent graphics cards. Check what Autodesk recommends and get the best you can afford. Cutting corners here is false economy and WILL cause crashes.

Some type of drawing server - you need somewhere on your network to store all your drawings where they can be referenced by different users, reliably and quickly.

A well-specced PC. Doesn't need to be amazing unless you're doing big assemblies, but does need to be at least the top end of the consumer scale.






Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.

 

[cadranger]

Memory, memory, memory (RAM)and good graphics card with 128 megs of, guess what?, memory. Win2K works very well as does XP-pro. Watch out how you design your project files. Think about a PDM. Constrain your sketches and assemblies - Always. Keep non-important part features simple (no radii smaller than 1/16" etc). Don't fill your assemblies with too many small parts such as hardware. Think of using sub-assemblies and the idea that a smaller BOM is a better BOM. This also helps with .idw's with lots of design views. Finally, patience, patience, patience. Good Luck!