Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

I am using Inventor 2011.

I recently deleted an unused file from a project workspace, and now every time I load a particular part (or the subassembly which includes it), Inventor complains of an unresolved reference to the file I deleted. However, as far as I can tell, this part does not contain any actual references to the file in question. I have even tried deleting everything from the browser tree and everything from the parameters list, and the "unresolved reference" error persists. This has brought the project to a halt, as this subassembly now cannot itself be placed in an assembly.

How do I proceed from here? As far as I can tell there's no way to even determine what in the affected part file was supposedly referencing what in the now-deleted file...

[#2]

Can you post the part file?

[#3 · Accepted solution]

(Note: I was able to recover from this problem, so the project is no longer in peril. The following is mainly for the benefit of anyone who might encounter a similar situation in the future.)

I've attached a version that shows nothing in the browser tree and nothing in the parameters list, yet still complains of an unresolved reference to "electrode_params.ipt".

Here's what I've gathered, over the course of a few hours trying to fight this problem, about the behavioral quirk responsible:

When a file reference goes "unresolved", any imported parameters from the missing file are hidden from the parameters list. Even if those parameters are not consumed by anything, the references to them remain, and because the relevant list entries are hidden, the user has no way to delete them. If the file that was referenced is truly lost, then this condition (as far as I can tell) is incurable.

Fortunately I was able to locate a backup of the file that had been overwritten. Otherwise the options would have been to either start with a fresh part file (which would have been unpleasant, as several other parts contained some type of reference to this one) or try to reverse-engineer the UFRxDoc database segment and purge the offending references by hand. Interestingly, I was able to suppress the "Resolve Link" dialog by (IIRC) by writing a null over the first character of the imported parameter name and the first character of the file path, but this was of no real use since the record was still there, and attempts to make broader alterations without any real understanding of the data structures in question invariably resulted in Inventor failing to read the UFRxDoc segment entirely...

[#4]

Classy solution

For an incurable issue...

[#5]

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greg_courville wrote:

When a file reference goes "unresolved", any imported parameters from the missing file are hidden from the parameters list. Even if those parameters are not consumed by anything, the references to them remain, and because the relevant list entries are hidden, the user has no way to delete them. If the file that was referenced is truly lost, then this condition (as far as I can tell) is incurable.

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I'm sorry i didnt see this sooner. As soon as I read your subject line I knew what your problem was. I've had to deal with it numerous times over the years. Each time i've been lucky we've had the original file, so i've been able to delete the parameters link then break or delete any other derived links or files correctly.

I admire you for trying to hack the file DB. I prob would have tried to do it via a VBA macro instead (with help cos i'm not good at programming.... yet). Also cheers for posting back with your findings, a lot of people dont.

I marked your solution as accepted for you  

[#6]

Hello there,

did you try the "skip unresolved reference" selector in the "open file" options of Inventor?

I did a screenshot, hope you can find it - it´s the German version i am working with.

If not, I can look it up on an English installation until tomorrow if you like.

Kind regards

Daniel

[#7]

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Sereniance wrote:

did you try the "skip unresolved reference" selector in the "open file" options of Inventor?

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Skipping the references allows the file to be opened, but Inventor will not allow an assembly containing unresolved references to be inserted into another assembly (at least, 2011 won't).

[#8]

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greg_courville wrote:

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Sereniance wrote:

did you try the "skip unresolved reference" selector in the "open file" options of Inventor?

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Skipping the references allows the file to be opened, but Inventor will not allow an assembly containing unresolved references to be inserted into another assembly (at least, 2011 won't).

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Exactly and its really bad practice to leave behind knowingly bad data. I'd want to throat punch anyone who knowlingly passed that onto me! ;-)

[#9]

I have a thing about unsolved problems, so I've worked out a rescue procedure. First, though, what I've learned about how to avoid creating this situation in the first place:

Safely deleting a part file

• Purge all known references (imported parameters, derived geometry, etc.) from other documents
• Save all open files
• Use Design Assistant to verify that there are no longer any files depending on the one you're getting rid of
• Close the file and remove the file via some reversible means, just in case

How to recover after screwing up the above

First, see if you can find an old version somewhere. It doesn't even have to contain the parameters or other data that the problem references were pointing to. As long as it has the right UUID, it should satisfy the "Resolve Link" dialog and allow you to go clean out the references that you missed the first time around.

Failing that, you still have an out, but it's not pretty. You have to hand-alter the affected files to trick Inventor into accepting a dummy file in place of the missing one.

• First, create a new part, save it and close it.
• You'll need to find the UUID of the new document. There might be a way to do this via the public API, but I haven't tried. In experimentation with a test data set (see clue.png and uuid_locations.png for illustration), I found that the UUID was always preceeded by the data (in hex) F44FDEAFCCACE65E7BD8BADBD211B028600052BEAD9287B0
  followed by 24 zero bytes. If you can find that string, the UUID is the first 16 bytes after the zeros.
• Now, in each affected file, you need to replace all instances of the missing file's UUID with that of the surrogate you just created. Do a text search for the name of the missing file (note: it will be stored as 2-byte little-endian characters, so make sure your search dialog is set up accordingly). You should find the UUID of the original referenced file 22 bytes past the end of the file path string. Replace this with the UUID of the surrogate.
• Save the altered version under a new name, and try opening it in Inventor. When asked to resolve the link, give Inventor the surrogate file. If you've performed the alterations correctly, Inventor should accept it and the imported parameters that were causing the problem should now be shown in the list so that you can delete them.
  Only once you're supremely confident that all is right, replace the original with your altered version (make sure neither is open when you do so).

  Hopefully this might be of some use if anybody else manages to get into this situation.

[#10]

Oh - sorry, i didn´t check that