Use Cadline Connect to Manage Your Vault PDFs

By Clint Brown

Autodesk Vault 2018 introduced automatic PDF creation as a new feature. 2D Inventor and AutoCAD files can be automatically published as PDFs when a file is released, saving designers valuable time. The PDF files generated by Vault can be stored either in the same folder as the original drawing, or in a specific Vault folder, there are even options for attaching the PDF to the original drawing file.

The PDF Options in Vault give organisations a lot of flexibility within the Vault, but there are no options for storing PDFs outside the Vault, for instance on a shared folder.

The Cadline Connect File Downloader module allows users to manage their PDF files outside of the Vault, saving PDFs to a specific network location.

The Cadline Connect File Downloader allows for a replicated Vault folder structure, or a flat folder structure. PDF files names can include the original file revision number.

The Cadline Connect File Downloader runs on the Vault server, it is designed to pull down all recent PDFs every 10 minutes (this interval can be changed)

The image below shows PDFs stored on a local drive, with a delimiter of "- Rev" and the original Inventor or AutoCAD drawing file's Revision number.

In addition to PDF downloads the Cadline Connect File Downloader is also able to convert 2D AutoCAD and Inventor Files to PDF/A format.

Revit sheets can also be published to PDF using the Cadline Connect File Downloader.