Costum border driven dimensions problem (Inventor bug?)

[omanuo]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to create a costum border. (see attached screenshot) On the right I placed 2 small vertical lines (between the 1. and the 2. inner rectangle), which are at a distance of 1/3 of the first inner rectangle's height from each other.

The height of the first inner rectangle is a driven dimension. When I want to edit the boarder again and change some dimensions, I always get the error: "Dimension could not be sovled. Change its value or remove some sketch constraints to allow the dimension to be solved."

The inconvenient solution to this problem is to double click on the driven dimension and click on the check-button. That makes the dimensions' colour turning from pink to black again and everything works normal.

So, somehow Inventor has a problem with driven dimensions in the border definition, and only there. I reproduced the same geometry twice, once in a part document sketch and once as an additional sketch on a drawing sheet. I had no problem at all.

I found this old thread mentioning the same problem in Inventor 2012: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/Template-border-dimensions-getting-sick/m-p/2918686/...

Actually I'm using Inventor 2013 and that problem still occurs.

Is there any workaround besides the "click-solution"? and is this an inventor bug or am I just doing something wrong?

[mrattray]

I noticed this post in the thread you reference:

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@stephengibson76 wrote:
The bug seems to be if you create a driven dimension and then reference that parameter in another dimension.  eg creating driven dimensions to equally space lines

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 Does this apply to you? Are you using the reference dimension in another formula? If you are then this is the same problem that I've experienced before in part sketches.

Either way, I suggest you try a different method of spacing those lines that doesn't involve a driven dimension.

[omanuo]

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@mrattray wrote:

I noticed this post in the thread you reference:

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@stephengibson76 wrote:
The bug seems to be if you create a driven dimension and then reference that parameter in another dimension.  eg creating driven dimensions to equally space lines

---

 Does this apply to you? Are you using the reference dimension in another formula? If you are then this is the same problem that I've experienced before in part sketches.

Either way, I suggest you try a different method of spacing those lines that doesn't involve a driven dimension.

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Hey Mike,

Yes, this apply to my problem. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I use the the height of the sheet, which is a driven dimension, to position the small, veritcal lines at 1/3 of the height. (see the attached screenshot)
In the border definition are 4 points representing the 4 sheet corners, so through these points it's possible to create dynamic borders applicable to different sheet sizes. As a consequence those points are "fixed" an the resultating dimensions are driven. So every other dimension, which is directly referenced to the height or the width of a sheet, will cause that problem.

I will now use the rectangular pattern function to place those lines, which works for that special case without making any trouble. But anyway it is an annoying bug, because you need to save an reopen the border definition to see if everything's fine or not. And there are probably some scenarios, in which there isn't any easy-to-use solution.