Keep It Clean!

As a member of the “Road Warriors”, those of us that travel a lot to customer engagements, I have the luxury of seeing many, many different engineering departments. This is a good thing considering the fact that every business has their own way of succeeding. Some methods are better than others but collectively, we can share these successes and help others when they are struggling.

One thing that amazes me though is the sheer number of individuals, both daily end users of Inventor and Vault and managers that occasionally open the applications, that don’t see the importance of keeping their workspace clean. Now some of you may be thinking of their 8′ x 8′ real estate they call home for 8 or more hours a day, but what I am referring to is their local Workspace. This is the disk space used for Inventor and Vault on the local machine that assists in working with files checked out of Vault. If you are viewing files from the Vault or are editing them, these copies clutter your workspace and can lead to confusion. Understanding that the Vault is there to store that one, accurate, true document is essential. Having redundant information is never a good idea to remain efficient and reduce errors.

In todays engineering environments, we need to minimize mistakes as much as possible. Keeping a clean workspace makes the applications perform better and is a good workflow for us to ensure we are following through with our tasks. When finishing a procedure to edit a DWG or modifying an IAM, checking the box “Close files and delete working copies” makes things even easier.

This will not only ensure that you are keeping your workspace clean but it also gives you a reminder that you are completed with that task and to move on to the next step.

As a rule of thumb, I recommend cleaning that workspace at least once a week. Come Friday, check everything in that has changes that you want to capture. Everything else doesn’t matter, you can just “Get Latest Version” on Monday. Then find your workspace folder, it may be Designs, Work, Inventor or some other name and just RMB - delete. Yes, I said delete. It’s alright, everything is in the Vault, you have nothing to worry about. Trust me