We are attempting to use a combination of iParts and derived parts to accomplish a certain CAD design goal. Up until this point everything seemed to work ok, but I ran across a problem. And, I'm not sure why it is happening - it seems like this should work. It is basically two iParts that "cascade" from one to the next via a derived part. Here is the breakdown:
Factory 1 --> Member 1a, Member 1b
Member 1b --derived--> Factory 2
Factory 2 --> Member 2a, Member 2b
The problem lies with Factory 2. This factory is created by first deriving Member 1b, which is a member of the first factory Factory 1. Once you have all of the members from Factory 1 created, and then create the derived Factory 2 (and it's members) everything works and updates fine. But, once you need to regenerate the members, the next time you open Factory 2 it cannot resolve to Member 1b. It prompts you to resolve it, but if you browse to the (newly created) Member 1b it will not accept it. Even though you are regenerating the members, they should be exact duplicates by the very definition of an iPart. So, Factory 2, as a "driven" component of a driven-driver derived pair, should be able to resolve.
Why we are needing to regenerate the iPart members is a bit of a long story. We are using a different document management system than Vault, and the plan is to not vault the iPart members, but just the iPart factories. So, when they are taken out of PDM the members will be regenerated.
I tried this on both Inv 10 SP3a (which is what we are currently on) and Inv 11 SP2. The same thing happens, but the dialogs are just a little different. I don't forsee a solution to this from the user side, but rather something that would have to be changed/fixed in Inventor. But, you never know - that's why the discussion boards are good. You can get other thoughts and ideas. I have a simple set of files to illustrate it if anyone is interested. Let me know and I can post to Inventor Customer Files. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.