Autodesk pulled a sneaky one and released the Vault 2016 help a few weeks ago without any press release, blog post, or any type of notification. So although the product wasn’t available, we were able to read all about the new features ahead of today’s release. Make sure you read the System Requirements changes at the end of this post, big changes in your environment may be required.

Here are the listed categories for the new features.

• New Item, BOM, and Change Order Features and Enhancements
• New Copy Design Experience
• Vault Thin Client Enhancements
• New Vault Office Thick Client
• Inventor and Third-Party CAD File Support
• Project Sync Enhancements
• Control Open File Behaviors in the Vault Client Feature
• ADMS Console Enhancements

I’m both disappointed and a bit perplexed with both the What’s New help and the overall message by Autodesk. There is no differentiation in the what’s new help between the three flavours of Vault. Some, like anything to do with Items, is crystal clear (only applies to Vault Pro) but many you have to read between the lines and make some educated guesses to determine if the enhancement applies to your Vault. Others, I have no clue which versions they apply, you’ll have to find out when you start using Vault. There is also little-to-no mention or indication of the features that were introduced with Vault 2015 R2. This makes the list seem very significant for 2016, when really probably close to half the new features were actually introduced with R2.

I don’t want this to be a distraction from the excitement of the new features, as there still are some significant ones, but be careful when reading through the document as not everything may apply to the type of Vault you are using.

If you are not currently using Vault 2015 R2 then before you dive into the new features within 2016 I would start with our Autodesk Vault 2015 R2 Summary, This was our summary of the enhancements added with 2015 R2 from last year, and so it serves as a good starting point to see what’s new with 2016 as well.

License Management

For this review, I’m going to start in an odd place… the Autodesk Data Management Console (ADMS) and FlexLM. That’s right, there are some kick-ass system management tools added that I don’t want to get lost in the mix.

Vault 2015 R2 introduced a new reindex option. Re-indexing now comes in the form of three options: Re-index lastest and released versions only, re-index lastest versions only, and re-index all versions. The new option (latest only) provides more flexibility and an option that should complete sooner than the other two. Also from a revision management perspective should a released object really be touched in any way?

Because of the architecture of Vault and how it is integrated with the FlexLM license management tools, it has always been difficult to determine who is currently logged into Vault and difficult to get any usage history. This all changes with 2016. FlexLM now logs by username, opposed to the generic AutodeskVault, meaning you can quickly determine who is currently using a license. The license reporting tools now apply to Vault, just like they have always done with the other Autodesk products. As a bonus, you can now reserve a license, saving the license for a particular user or user group. [Yay!!!!!!!]

Vault Office Thick Client

First introduced for Vault 2015 customers, non-subscription customers can now use the Vault Office Client. Think of it as the full client, minus all CAD related functionality. With the Office Client, you don’t only get access to check-in and check-out but also the ability to apply lifecycles to folders, files, and items, and to participate in Change Orders. Using this you can also generate reports and work with custom objects. It’s not free, but costs less than a license of Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional.

As a bonus, with 2016 and the licensing improvements you can now segregate the Vault Office licenses away from your other Vault licenses, reserving them specifically for non-CAD people.

Vault Thin Client Enhancements

• BOM filters to toggle the display of OFF rows and whether you see non-released items
• The thin client now supports ON, OFF, and non-assigned item BOM rows
• Support for the new Grouped BOM rows and BOM specific properties (which can only be controlled within the administration settings, making it impossible to filter the BOM’s on-the-fly, even in the full client application!)
• View item versions
• Reference Designator integration for viewing AutoCAD Electrical BOM data

Everything Else

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be doing a deep-dive into the enhancements of the following topics. Make sure to come back to check them out.

1. Copy Design Experience
2. Item & BOM enhancements
3. New Unified Lifecycle, Category, Numbering Scheme, and Revision Experience