Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Getting the dreaded "The attempted operation did not produce a meaningful result. Try with different inputs." error. At first it was just if I tried to extrude something (in a weldment currently but seems to do it across the board). It was also giving me the error when I tried to Place a Content Center file. It said it couldn't build the extrusion and gave me a red cross. I'm baffled by this error since it seemed to just start here and there, so I'd reboot IV and it would usually work for at least a while. Now, it's doing it for pretty much every operation I try (except constraints, it seems). Such a weird deal, I wonder if anyone has come across this before? I thought it was a Graphics Card issue from my experience in the past, but could it also be a software issue?

I'm running Inventor Pro 2013 on an HP xw8600 Workstation with Windows 7 SP1 64-bit. Intel Xeon 3GHZ CPU, 8 GB of RAM, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 Graphics Card with 768MB GDDR3 RAM.

Any suggestions?

I've attached the extruding & Content Center errors as well.

[#2]

Attach a file here that exhibits this behavior.

Usual error is cut direction simply needs to be flipped, but your description sounds like it might be a bit more involved than that.

Also I have seen behavior similar to this if there is any corrupt geometry within any part in an assembly.

Go to Manage>Rebuild All (usually can narrow down a suspect file rather than having to check every one).

Dragging the EOP up and down forces a rebuild as well.

I am betting this is the problem in your case.

[#3]

It wasn't a specific file but something that seemed to be occuring across the board. It was in just about every file in the project I'm working on. I didn't try a wide sample set to see how far the error went, though I probably should of.

Though I don't think it's causing the problem, the project I'm working in is an old legacy "Shared" project type. I know, I know. It was done that way before I joined the company. If I could mass change them all to Single user projects, I would.

I know this is kind of a vague question but I put it out there to see if anyone could point right to the cause of the error.

P.S. The file I was working on specifically was a weldment .iam. How would I attach that to this posting anyways?

Thanks for your help!

[#4]

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str8zstar wrote:

 It was in just about every file in the project

P.S. The file I was working on specifically was a weldment .iam. How would I attach that to this posting anyways?

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Hopefully it isn't a problem with your install of Inventor.
If there is a bad file anywhere referenced in any way by this project then I guessing from past experience that it could be the culprit.
Often the first and easiest step to see if it is a bad corrupt install or if it is a corrupt file is to attach the file(s) here to see if others can reproduce the issue with the same dataset.
The easiest way to attach an assembly here is to File>Save As Pack and Go (strip all of the extraneous stuff out of the resulting folder).  Then right click on the folder and select Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder. Attach the resulting *.zip file here.  If the *.zip file is too large (>1.5Meg) then open the larger part files and drag the red End of Part Marker to the top of the browser hiding all features.  Save the file with the EOP in this rolled up state (it will be much smaller) then zip and attach.

You other option is to search Google for Autodesk Clean Uninstall instructions and re-install Inventor.  But if the problem is somewhere in the project rather than in Inventor.....

[#5]

Ok, so I've tried a few things in the past few weeks and here's where I sit now.

• I've essentially ruled out the PC being the problem. I just upgraded to a 16GB Thinkpad with a 2GB NVIDIA Quadro K1000M Video Card.
• With the new laptop, I put a fresh install of Inventor Pro '13 on it as well.
• Also upgraded to SP1.1 just today.

With each step, the problem didn't occur for the first little bit. Then it gradually started creeping back again. I'm fairly convinced now that it's the files themselves but I don't know what to do. Like I said, I've been working in this project since May 2012 and haven't gotten these errors until just after this past Christmas. Which initially led me to believe it was a hardware issue, not software.

I'm attaching an assembly I was recently working in (110070) that consistently gave me these errors. But like I said, once I get the error in one assembly/part, it doesn't matter which assembly/part I go into, the error is pervasive across the entire software. I can't do any destructive or additive operations to the geometry. I can't even import Content Center files when it gets to that point. I have to close down Inventor and restart. And after a while, it will do it all over again. The assembly I attached has two CC steel rod's floating in space. When I first tried to place them it gave me the error, saying it couldn't model the Body of the part.

In the attached assembly, I moved the EOP up on several of the parts to get the file size under 1.5MB like was suggested so you'll need to fix that when you open it. Also, one thing I don't think I mentioned in the previous posts was that the company I work for has used Shared "legacy" projects in Inventor since way back when. Every file was made in a Shared project type. No one uses them for what they were originally intended (an early version of Vault), so it's basically just a massive annoyance.

I would love, love, love to implement Vault here. I've rolled it out at several companies that I've work for in the past and feel it's the optimal way to work with Inventor across several users. However, the time that it would take to get every one of these files switched to just Single-user project types would take forever. The file structure here leaves much to be desired and unfortunately we're too busy to do anything about it right now. Such is life, eh? I've looked for a program to batch switch the project-types over but have had no luck so far.

Any assistance is much appreciated.

Regards,

Ryan