Greetings

    We are seeking advice and guidance for installing and configuring the Autodesk Inventor software system. What are some things that we might avoid doing that have already been proven to be a problem? What experiences and or choices would you in the CAD community change if you had the chance at a clean slate as we have here? We have 27 licenses of Inventor, about half of them are the professional and we intend to make use of the Vault for data management.

 I have recently taken a job with this company that has been doing things in 2D AutoCad for as long as 2D has been around. There are mountains of legacy AutoCad data. We have a team of about thirty engineers currently using AutoCad 2008 detailing the work the company product is largely sheet metal and fabricated metal parts, housings, frames and some electrical gadgets. Most assemblies are less than 100 parts. There is a well established host of standard parts that can be customized to special requests in several types of metals and coatings.

  Our task is to implement the Inventor software and model the entire product line while gradually bringing the other engineers over to 3D as their product line is modeled. My background is primarily using Pro-e for the past 11 years. I am well versed in modeling concepts and software installation. One member of my team has installed and used the Inventor software in its earlier versions. WE do not currently have a support subscription but intend to purchase it as soon as we get started.

We have purchased 19 workstations and most are up and running but have not yet purchased our server. Legacy data is served to the guys from a shared server doing other company functions. Workstations are Dell Precision T3400 Dual Quad CPU Q6600 @2.4 GHZ with 2 GB of RAM.

Any input at this stage would be greatly appreciated. Below are a few questions we have compiled:

1: Server configuration:

A: Stand alone hardware for license serving, data storage and data management.

B: Redundant drives and programmed backup capabilities for data protection.

 C: Published issues imply that version 2008 might require some of these

 functions to be on separate servers.  An update in 2009 refers to this issue and corrects it.

D: Server OS, 2009 requires 2003 server or newer

2: Acquire tech support subscription for Inventor and Vault.

3: Inventor version, use 2008 or upgrade to 2009 for initial install?

4: MRP relationship to CAD data

5: File naming conventions to be followed:

A:  Standard assemblies, parts and drawings

B: Methodology to designate job order variations and maintain traceability to standard

C: document revision cycle and describe how previous versions will be stored or discarded

6: IT liaison for Inventor setup

            A: Ongoing system configuration director, same IT person or engineering staff member?