Understanding Inventor's iProperties and Vault's Properties

In recent weeks, I have been finding that I have been talking to a lot of CAD managers and CAD users about the differences between the Inventor's iProperties and Vault's Properties.  So I decided to kick off a short series of posts regarding properties.

Out of the box, Vault is set to map a lot of its properties to Inventor's iProperties, or vice versa.  It does such a great job that users don't realize there is a difference.

To recognize the difference, it is important to understand how Vault it structured.  Vault's information is split into two parts: the file store and the database.  The file store is all of the files that are stored in the Vault.  The database is a SQL database that stores all of the metadata of the files.  Metadata is basically a fancy term for all of the properties of the files.  So when a user is in Vault looking at all a particular folder, they can display a variety of properties.  In this case, they are really looking at the properties in the database for those files.  Again, most of Inventor's iProperties are already mapped to Vault Properties, so it gives the illusion that you are looking at the iProperties.

Vault actually has two types of properties, User Defined Properties (UDP) and System Properties.  System Properties are attributes that Vault needs to keep track of, so you are not able to edit these.  Some examples of System Properties are:  Checked Out By, Date Version Created, and Revision, just to name a few.

Vault System Properties

Now a User Defined Property can be pretty much anything a user needs to track.  Vault has a significant number of UDPs by default, but Vault Administrators can add as many properties as they need.  These properties can also be editable.

Vault User Defined Properties

Now, Inventor's iProperties have essentially the same role.  They are designed to allow users to track attributes of the design.  Then they can be used to populate Bills of Material or Title Blocks.  Just like Vault, they can be edited and users have the ability to create their own custom iProperties.   

Inventor's iProperties

The biggest take away here is to understand that there is a difference between the Inventor iProperites and Vault Properties.  It is possible and some-what essential to map iProperties to Vault Properties to make use of Inventor and Vault easier.  For this reason, Autodesk has set up default mappings between the most common Inventor iProperties and Vault Properties.

In future posts, I intend on covering how to create Vault Properties, how to create the mapping between a Vault Property and a custom Inventor iProperties, and how to add a custom iProperty to a Title Block.