Do I need to give up on Inventor?

[tomsum]

I have been using IV for about 4 months. There are currently only 3 out of 13 seats here using IV. The other ten are still using MDT6. We have thousands of drawings in MDT6 and many, in fact most, of these drawings are used in multiple locations. We don't have the time to convert all of our drawings to IV. Therefore, when I need a part that is used in many MDT6 assemblies I am linking the MDT6 file to my IV assemblies. This feature seemed to be working well until this past week. Myself and the other two engineers working in IV have lost constraints on almost all linked MDT parts. A rough estimate of 400 constraints have been lost. We were in the process of fixing these assemblies, but today I had an assembly that had been fixed blow apart on me yet again. I worked with the drawing in the morning saving and reopening without any problems. This afternoon I again opened the file and guess what? That's right the darn thing fell apart. We have tried multiple computers with different configurations and each yields the same results. The parts that have lost constraints have not been touched. We are using IV 5.3 SP 2. Is there anyone that is linking MDT parts? Does anyone have any idea why we would suddenly lose constraints after months of flawless performance?

[Anonymous]

A possibility: I have seen what you are referring to if Inventor was
finding a different set of files of the same names somewhere. Consider
reviewing the assemblies in Design Assistant looking for paths which are
other than what you think they should be. Try using a program like
FileDup to locate and move all duplicate files. In some cases, the
"missing" constraints would self repair when Inventor was linking to the
"correct" files.

tomsteffan wrote:
> I have been using IV for about 4 months. There are currently only 3 out
> of 13 seats here using IV. The other ten are still using MDT6. We have
> thousands of drawings in MDT6 and many, in fact most, of these drawings
> are used in multiple locations. We don't have the time to convert all of
> our drawings to IV. Therefore, when I need a part that is used in many
> MDT6 assemblies I am linking the MDT6 file to my IV assemblies. This
> feature seemed to be working well until this past week. Myself and the
> other two engineers working in IV have lost constraints on almost all
> linked MDT parts. A rough estimate of 400 constraints have been lost. We
> were in the process of fixing these assemblies, but today I had an
> assembly that had been fixed blow apart on me yet again. I worked with
> the drawing in the morning saving and reopening without any problems.
> This afternoon I again opened the file and guess what? That's right the
> darn thing fell apart. We have tried multiple computers with different
> configurations and each yields the same results. The parts that have
> lost constraints have not been touched. We are using IV 5.3 SP 2. Is
> there anyone that is linking MDT parts? Does anyone have any idea why we
> would suddenly lose constraints after months of flawless performance?

[Anonymous]

Last I looked at linking to MDT files the real PITA
for me is you could only link PARTS not ASSEMBLYS which was a huge limitation
IMHO.

style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">

"tomsteffan" <
href="mailto:toms@unverferth.com">toms@unverferth.com> wrote in message

href="news:f11e697.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb">news:f11e697.-1@WebX.maYIadrTaRb...

I
have been using IV for about 4 months. There are currently only 3 out of 13
seats here using IV. The other ten are still using MDT6. We have thousands of
drawings in MDT6 and many, in fact most, of these drawings are used in
multiple locations. We don't have the time to convert all of our drawings to
IV. Therefore, when I need a part that is used in many MDT6 assemblies I am
linking the MDT6 file to my IV assemblies. This feature seemed to be working
well until this past week. Myself and the other two engineers working in IV
have lost constraints on almost all linked MDT parts. A rough estimate of 400
constraints have been lost. We were in the process of fixing these assemblies,
but today I had an assembly that had been fixed blow apart on me yet again. I
worked with the drawing in the morning saving and reopening without any
problems. This afternoon I again opened the file and guess what? That's right
the darn thing fell apart. We have tried multiple computers with different
configurations and each yields the same results. The parts that have lost
constraints have not been touched. We are using IV 5.3 SP 2. Is there anyone
that is linking MDT parts? Does anyone have any idea why we would suddenly
lose constraints after months of flawless
performance?