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Inventor 2014 STEP Import - Browser names do not match file names

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Message 1 of 14
dandoleman
2528 Views, 13 Replies

Inventor 2014 STEP Import - Browser names do not match file names

HI there 

One of my customers has sent me a STEP file they are having problems with when importing in to Inventor 2014.

 

When they import it, it imports successfully as Inventor ipt and iam files but the browser (node) names are llisted as the component descriptive names, but when you interrogate the file names in the iProperties they are listed as part1, part2 etc. which is not very helpful.

 

I have imported the same STEP file into Inventor 2013, and the behaviour is as expected i.e. the bowser names match the files names (i.e. they are the descriptive names, not part1, part2 etc.)

 

I have tried all the different import settings in the dialog box, but can't seem to resolve it.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Dan

13 REPLIES 13
Message 2 of 14
CCarreiras
in reply to: dandoleman

Hi!

 

When you export a STP, the part names in the assembly's browser (ocurrences) will be the same when you import the resultant step, also the part's "file names" will maintain. But it's possible to have a diferent "assembly's browser part name" and "file names" for the same part.

 

I think maybe... when you export the STP, maybe you change the name in the assembly browser, but forget to change the file names, can be possible?

 

 

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Regards.
CCarreiras
Message 3 of 14

Hi Studioworx,

 

Since Inventor 2014 uses new data translation platform, so there is behavior change compared with legacy (Inventor 2013).

 

For the instance name, Inventor 2013 gets produce name as its instance name while Inventor 2014 gets NAUO name as instance name and will rename instance name only if there is duplicate one.

 

For the solid body name, Inventor 2013 gets name from SHAPE_REPRESENTATION in the STEP file, if string is empty, using part name as body name. Inventor 2014 gets name from MANIFOLD_SOLID_BREP or BREP_WITH_VOIDS, if string is empty, use inventor default, such as "Solid1, Solid2,...".

 

To do a further investigation, can you share your STEP file here or via email Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com  and attach some images to show the problem ?

 

 

Regards,

Kevin-Hongyuan Li
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group
Direct: +86 21 2039 6025
Email: Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com
Autodesk, Inc.
NO. 130, Lane 91, E Shan Rd
Building 12, Floor 6,
Shanghai 200127, PRC
www.autodesk.com
Message 4 of 14

Hi Studioworx,

 

I thought more and did more investigation and understood more about your problem, the problem I suppose is the instance name is not equal the document name, take below structure for example:

  TopAssembly

   |

   |_Instance1

   |_Instance2

   |_......

When open the Instance1 or Instance2 in a new document, the document name is shown part1 or part2 in Inventor2014, so when you save it on the local disk, the file is part1.ipt or part2.ipt, seems this naming conversion is not very meaningful because it just use the default Inventor naming rule. Let me give more explanation:

 

Behavior change for document/file name:

    Please open your STEP file with Notepad++ and find keypoint string "PRODUCT", take below code for example

    #5=PRODUCT('1332_010_002_000','','',(#2)) ;

    code format is Product ('ID', 'NAME', 'DESCRIPTION'), so in this example, ID=1332_010_002_000, NAME=N/A,       DESCRIPTION=N/A

     In Inventor 2013 the code logic is to use string of PRODUCT-ID as its document/file name, and let instance name = document/file name. In Inventor 2014 since we changed the legacy behavior since we think it is more make sense according to STEP specification that use PRODUCT-NAME instead of PRODUCT-ID as document/file name, but in this case, the PRODUCT-NAME string = N/A, so we will follow the Inventor default naming rule which use part1, part2, ......partn as its document/file name.

 

 

Behavior change for instance name:

    Please open your STEP file with Notepad++ and find keypoint string NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURANCE, take below code for example:

    #15454=NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE('1332_010_002_002.1','1332_010_002_002.1','',#13,#29,' ') ;

    code format is NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE('ID', 'NAME', 'DESCRIPTION')

    In Inventor 2013 we set instance name = document/file name which use PRODUCT-ID. In Inventor 2014, we use string of  NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE-NAME as its instance name, if no NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE defined in the STEP file, we uses Inventor 2014's document/file name as its instance name which use PRODUCT-NAME. If the NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE-NAME is N/A, we also will follow Inventor default rule which uses part1, part2, ......partn as its instance name which seems not very meaningful. But I think we do the right thing based on STEP specification because we should use string of PRODUCT-NAME or NEXT_ASSEMBLY_USAGE_OCCURRENCE-NAME instead of its ID to shown in the browser.

 

I will collect this case in our customer feedback pool and discuss more for this behavior change if more and more customer reports got for this change.

 

 

Regards,

Kevin-Hongyuan Li
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group
Direct: +86 21 2039 6025
Email: Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com
Autodesk, Inc.
NO. 130, Lane 91, E Shan Rd
Building 12, Floor 6,
Shanghai 200127, PRC
www.autodesk.com
Message 5 of 14
dandoleman
in reply to: dandoleman

Kevin,

 

thank you for your suggestions, I'm not sure exactly what I am looking for, as I couldn't find any lines that said N/A. So I have emailed you the STEP file directly, if you can take a look and let me know what you think.

 

Apparently another STEP file import worked fine with the bowser nodes matching the file names, so it would be interesting to know what is causing it in this case.

 

As a temporary work around we have imported it into 2013, and then opened and saved in 2014, not ideal but a fix for now.

 

Best Regards

 

Dan Doleman

Message 6 of 14

Hi Kevin,

 

We have a customer who is very angry with this change. It's not acceptable. Can you add an option (registry key by example) in roder to use the old STEP import?

Message 7 of 14

Hi, xdumont

 

Thanks for share the customer feedback in the forum!

 

We are taking a look it now.

 

You can refer to the above temporarily workaround that is imported it into 2013, and then opened and saved in 2014, you can also email the STEP file to me Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com I will double check and update the STEP file to match Inventor 2013 behavior.

 

 

Regards,

Kevin-Hongyuan Li
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group
Direct: +86 21 2039 6025
Email: Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com
Autodesk, Inc.
NO. 130, Lane 91, E Shan Rd
Building 12, Floor 6,
Shanghai 200127, PRC
www.autodesk.com
Message 8 of 14

Hi Kevin,

 

Thanks for this proposition but it's not an isolate case. This customer need to import STEP weekly. But can you develop a tools to clean the STEP file in order to open it in 2014 like the 2013?

 

Thnaks in advance.

Message 9 of 14

Hi xdumont,

 

Thanks for feedback and understand your requirement.

We are now discussing this internally and will update you the result as soon as possible.

 

Regards,

 

Kevin-Hongyuan Li
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group
Direct: +86 21 2039 6025
Email: Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com
Autodesk, Inc.
NO. 130, Lane 91, E Shan Rd
Building 12, Floor 6,
Shanghai 200127, PRC
www.autodesk.com
Message 10 of 14
yannick3
in reply to: dandoleman

Hi Kevin
I think this behavior change (2014) is very useless and not acceptable for all of us.
This will be change rapidly from Autodesk
Yannick Verreault
INV PRO 2015
MS Office 2007
Win 7 pro, core i7 950, asus P6T WS
nvidia Gforce GTX 295
WD caviar black 500Go
WD caviar black 1To

Message 11 of 14
KevinLi-Autodesk
in reply to: yannick3

Hi yannick3,

 

Thanks for your comments!

 

This STEP model is a special case as its PRODUCT_NAME is null, so Inventor gives the default naming conversion such as Partxxx, and not all the STEP files have the same problem based on the behavior change, I think most STEP files work well say it is same as legacy's behavior, anyway the code needs to be stronger to handle PRODUCT_NAME = null case to let it same as legacy's behavior too because it is more meanful from customer point of view. We will log it as defect in our issue tracking system.

 

We are fixing it now and try out best to make fix available in next Inventor 2014 update or service package. Please use the workaround mentioned in above posts for the temporarily solution.

 

Again thanks all for the posting and feedback !

 

Regards,

Kevin-Hongyuan Li
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Design, Lifecycle and Simulation Product Group
Direct: +86 21 2039 6025
Email: Hongyuan.Li@autodesk.com
Autodesk, Inc.
NO. 130, Lane 91, E Shan Rd
Building 12, Floor 6,
Shanghai 200127, PRC
www.autodesk.com
Message 12 of 14
wiedemei
in reply to: yannick3

Problem still exists Build:222, Release: 2014 SP1 Update 3 - Date: Mon 02/10/2014

 

Problem:

 

Open .stp file, all components in assembly are named NAOU#, hardware is duplicated with new parts.  However, in the imported folder all relevant names are there.  The parts saved corredtly, but the assembly is worthless. 

 

Replace component does nothing.  Rebuilding the assembly is the only solution I could do.

Message 13 of 14

Hi wiedemei ,

 

If you go to the Assemble tab Productivity panel Rename Browser Nodes button, can you use one of the optiosns to get the result you want? :

http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2014/ENU/?guid=GUID-85EAA751-D69B-454D-9871-251D90B20F06

 

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

Message 14 of 14

This solution has worked.

 

Thank you.

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