Fourteen files checked out in the name of a colleague who left years ago. Three projects marked "active" while the machines have long been running at the customer. There is a folder called "old", a folder called "old final", and a handful of assemblies with "copy" in the name that nobody dares to declare obsolete. No vault starts out like this. Almost every vault ends up like this, unless someone steps in.
The good news: stepping in does not have to be a multi-week project. With focused preparation you can run a Vault cleanup in a single day with the whole team: the overdue maintenance cleared in one go, plus a few agreements that keep it clean afterwards. A toolbox like Thundercad keeps the daily Inventor work light, but against a silted-up vault only one thing helps: a day of rolling up sleeves together. This is the playbook.
Why every vault silts up
A Vault does not get polluted by ill will but by priority: there is always a project more important than cleaning up. On top of that, cleaning is nobody's job, there is the fear that "maybe that copy is still needed", departing colleagues leave working copies behind, and projects have a clear start but no closing ritual. Five causes, and none of them solves itself. Meanwhile the symptoms quietly pile up: searching takes longer, duplicates breed new duplicates, and new colleagues copy the clutter because they assume it is the standard.
The cost stays invisible for a long time. Until a work preparator spends an afternoon hunting for the right version of a frame, or a colleague keeps working on an outdated working copy because the original has been sitting in someone's name for months. By then the vault is not just messy but unreliable, and unreliable is more expensive than messy: people build shadow archives next to it on network drives, and then you have two problems.
The week before: take stock
The cleanup day succeeds or fails in the week before it. Pull a few lists and you know exactly how big the job is:
- everything checked out longer than a few weeks, grouped per person;
- files in the name of colleagues who no longer work there;
- projects without recent activity that are still registered as running;
- file names that occur more than once, and folders named "old", "backup" or "copy of";
- files that ended up outside the agreed folder structure.
Assign those lists to owners in advance, plan the day with the whole team and arrange two things: someone with administrator rights close by, and a fresh backup before anything is touched. Block the calendars for real: a cleanup day on which three people "quickly do something in between" becomes half a cleanup day.
The order on the day itself
- Ground rules first. Fifteen minutes with coffee: the backup is confirmed, and nobody permanently deletes anything today. Everything that looks disposable moves to a quarantine folder or an archive state.
- Everyone their own checkouts. Check in what is finished, undo the checkout of whatever holds no real work. Why leaving this backlog in place keeps costing you time is covered in Check-in discipline: why half checked-in work is so expensive.
- The legacy of departed colleagues. The administrator handles their checkouts, using the decision rules below.
- Duplicates and stray files. Case by case: which file is the original, which one do assemblies reference? The rest goes to quarantine.
- Closing projects. Everything that is finished gets its end state and moves to the archive part of the structure. How to do that thoroughly is covered in Project done? Closing it properly (so you can find it in five years).
- Wrap up. Count what was done, note the leftovers and agree who picks them up, and when.
Stick to the order: checkouts first, because a file sitting in someone's name blocks every other decision about it. In practice the checkouts and the duplicates fill the morning, and the projects fill the afternoon.
A vault only stays clean when working tidily is also the fastest route. Thundercad takes the clicking out of opening, closing, exporting and updating metadata, so the good habit costs you no time.
Try 30 days freeDecision rules for the hard cases
Checked out by someone who no longer works there: look at the version history first. If assemblies and drawings reference the last checked-in version and there is no trace of recent work, undo the checkout. If a leftover working copy does contain real work, check it in with a clear comment, so the next person knows what they are looking at.
Duplicate files: the original is the file that other files reference. Settle it with where-used, move the loser to quarantine and never delete it on the spot, because somewhere an old assembly may still point to it.
Half-finished projects: you do not finish those today. The cleanup day exists to get the vault in order, not to catch up on engineering backlog. Mark them, plan them, move on.
And whenever in doubt: quarantine plus a note. Ten parked doubts beat one file gone for good.
Agreements that keep the vault clean
Without agreements you will be back here before long. Four agreements make the difference:
- a fixed mini-round: everyone reviews their own checkouts at the end of the week, five minutes of work;
- one owner: someone watches the signals, such as the number of files checked out longer than a few weeks, and follows up on them;
- an offboarding checklist: whoever leaves the company first hands over their checkouts and working copies;
- closing belongs to the project: the end state and the archive are part of project completion, not something for some day.
Finally, put the next cleanup round in the calendar straight away. With the agreements above it will be a morning instead of a day next time, and eventually a walk-through instead of a workday.
Frequently asked questions
How much time does a cleanup day really take?
Count on a few hours of preparation for pulling and assigning the lists, and then one full day with the whole team. Do not expect a perfect vault at the end: the goal is the bulk gone and the leftovers assigned. A second round after that takes a morning at most.
What do we do with files nobody can vouch for?
Park them in the quarantine folder with a note and agree on a retention term. Whatever is still untouched after that term can go. Vault's version history remains your safety net: permanent deletion is rarely needed, and almost never on the day itself.
How do we prevent the vault from filling up again within months?
With the agreements from this article: a weekly mini-round, one owner and an offboarding checklist. And by making the daily actions light, because clutter grows wherever working tidily takes effort. The free trial month of Thundercad shows how much clicking can disappear from a working day.