Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

You can send the xml files to me at chris.mitchell@autodesk.com - I'll see what I can find out about this.

-Chris

[#2]

Hi Chris!

as promised I sent you our 2012 Colors.xml and Materials.xml I assume textures would give you some additional unnecessary stress, so I supplied you also a copy without textures styles (the *_noMaps.xml files).

I hope you'll have some more luck than me...

Any news from Cecy Chen?

Marry Christmas!!

MaX

[#3]

...I forgot to mention: the crashes begun after installing SP1.1 (I never installed SP1, and with pure Inv2013 things were working fine)

[#4]

Max,

Many Thanks for sending all the info - we've identified the cause of the issue & are working on a fix for this for an upcoming update. I'll let you know as things progress.

Thanks,

Chris

[#5]

Hi Chris!

any news on this upcoming update?

Can I ask, how did you name this issue?

Thanks,

Massimo

[#6]

Hi Massimo.

A fix for the problems you reported is currently being tested; it's planned for release within the next 2-3 weeks. It will be incorporated in to "SP1.1 update2". The issue was related to some illegal characters in your xml files which were not being handled appropriately during the migration to adsklib & subsequently causing problems in the material/appearance browser.

Thanks,
Chris

[#7]

Chris, can you expand a bit on the illegal characters?  I've had the Material & Appearance editors bark at me for illegal characters in the names, such as parentheses.  What characters are illegal, and why?

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

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Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 1
Windows XP Pro 32-bit, SP3
HP EliteBook 8730w; 4 GB RAM; Core™ 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz; Quadro FX2700M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.7.18
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

[#8]

From my side the illegal characters were coming from inventor standard libraries, thus the problem was not "some illegal characters in our xml files" but "some illegal characters in autodesk standard xml files". But maybe these are not the illegal characters that Chris is talking about...

Each item has a multilanguage description like:

<Style InternalName="1:Wood_cherry&#xA;" EditFlag="0" Density="0.5" YoungsModulus="10.3" PoissonsRatio="0.392" YieldStrength="49" UltimateTensileStrength="3.9" ThermalConductivity="0.12" LinearExpansion="4.5" SpecificHeat="1.2" WeldmentMaterial="0" ExternalMaterialId="2:MATERIAL:MI_InventorSustainability:F5BAD8E7-A593-4851-944B-C9EE2740032B:6E6E40AC-4081-41D9-9050-0F7267D138A8:0">
<SubStyle Type="ColorStyle" Language="1033" Collection="Colors">Wood (Cherry)</SubStyle>
<Name Language="1028" Description="">木材 (櫻桃木)</Name>
<Name Language="1029" Description="">Dřevo (třešeň)</Name>
<Name Language="1031" Description="">Holz (Kirschbaum)</Name>
<Name Language="1033" Description="">wood (cherry)</Name>
<Name Language="1036" Description="">Bois (cerisier)</Name>
<Name Language="1038" Description="">Fa (cseresznye)</Name>
<Name Language="1040" Description="">legno (ciliegio)</Name>
<Name Language="1041" Description="">Wood (Cherry)</Name>
<Name Language="1042" Description="">나무(체리)</Name>
<Name Language="1045" Description="">Drewno (wiśnia)</Name>
<Name Language="1046" Description="">Madeira (Cerejeira)</Name>
<Name Language="1049" Description="">Дерево (вишня)</Name>
<Name Language="2052" Description="">木材(樱桃木)</Name>
<Name Language="3082" Description="">Madera (cerezo)</Name>
</Style>

The same happens for the colors.xml

But actually the xml files were perfectly coherent with what specified in the xml definition (the first line of the file):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>

as the xml file opened without any problem in any browser.

Keep in mind that Autodesk is not new to do things a little bit "artistic", for example:

1. if you don't have a carriage return ( &#xA; ) after the material internal name in the materials.xml file, updating of standard components will fail
2. styles pointing to other styles (for example when you specify the text style of a table style, but also when you must choose a color for a material) are pointing NOT to the attribute Style@InternalName of the text style (as any decent database architect would do), but to the item Name of that style with the specific attribute Name@Language that you must specify in the referenced style. That's why the xml element

<SubStyle Type="ColorStyle" Language="1033" Collection="Colors">Wood (Cherry)</SubStyle>

up here is so composed (it's a little bit tricky, but it's like that... amazing)

Nevertheless we learnt to live with it, and everything was working fine... so far.

I didn't have any other illegal characters.

And i still prefer the xml architecture

[#9]

Hi Chris!

any news on this SP1 update2 release?

I still didn't see nothing on the website.

[#10]

The current status of 2013 SP1.1 Update2 shows that it should be released around Feb 5th, (subject to outcome of on-going testing).

Thanks,
Chris