iParts + vault = entirely broken?

[Anonymous]

I've been keeping a log of the odd behavoir I get with iParts, iAssemblies, and Vault (2011).

1)  Checking out an iPart/iAssembly factory (from within Inventor) does not check out the children of that factory.  As a result, any attempts to generate children which already exist will result in "Problem saving..."  This seems to be a known issue, but it has been this way since at least Version 11 (2007).

A workaround seems to be to checkout the children manually from the vault browser.  This is contrary to the normal workflow of "Do not check in/out from outside of the Inventor plugin", and causes issues with less experienced employees who do not realize they need to do this.

2)  Changing iProperties (description, etc) of an iPart/iAssembly factory does not mark the children as dirty.  Even if they are checked out manually (as above), they will never be overwritten, as an iProperty change by itself is not enough to trigger a save.  Typically I must manually edit a dimension, and then edit it back to its original value to force a regenerate on all the iPart children.

3)

-Check out an iPart/Iassembly factory (from INV) and all children (manually, again as above).

-Make edits to the factory as needed and generate all children.

-Check in iPart (all the children DO check in properly)

-Open an assembly which uses an instance of this iPart.

-Save the assembly, it now will mark the iPart instance as "edited out of turn" (green dot), when it was clearly just taken care of in the previous steps. 

This doesn't make any sense, as the local copy should be identical to the one which was just checked in.  If it is using the "previous version" as it was originally inserted into the assembly, then this dot should be RED, as in "hey, theres something new in the vault".

These errors make iParts nearly impossible to use with vault.  Doubly so in a multiuser environment.  I constantly worry that a part will be overwritten, or changes will be lost, or conjured from a previous version, or some other witchcraft. 

Why is this still a problem since 2007 (at least?)

[pauldoubet]

If you said iAssemblies and Vault is entirely broken I would be inclined to agree with you. I personally have not had any issues with iParts as stand alone parts. I have had some problems with iAssemblies and at this point have received no response from anyone at Autodesk, although I have not posted a support request through the subscription portal.

If you are on subscription I would recommend you fill out a support request and see if you get any results.

Good Luck, Paul

[Anonymous]

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@pauldoubet wrote:

If you are on subscription I would recommend you fill out a support request and see if you get any results.

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I have done this, and have gotten a response that "This is a known issue and is being investigated by development".

The suggested "work-around" was to click "NO" when asked to update files upon opening an assembly.  I don't think this is a viable work-around, as I have no way of knowing if the files in a particular assembly are really in need of updating, or if they are merely 'crying wolf'.

I hope they really *are* looking into this, but I'm not holding my breath.  If I learn anything, I will post the solution here for anyone else who struggles with this to find.

[pauldoubet]

I agree with the click 'No' thing, I believe they know what the problem is but have not given it enough priority to get it fixed. I believe what happens is the 'Yes' response attempts to update every instance of the iParts in the iAssembly instead of just the active row in the iAssembly table.

Just my 2 cents worth, Paul

[Anonymous]

I have a ticket in now for the same issues.  This really sucks because I did not realize there were iPart/iAssembly issues with the Vault until I had used the iAssembly as a subassembly in several main assemblies and had created all needed .dwgs.  Now, none of the dwgs can be checked into the Vault.  This has a suck factor or 10!

Come one Autodesk!  Let's get this fixed.  I know there are only two or three developers working on Vault but come on...this has to be the top priority!

Inventor 2010

Vault 2010

Windows 7

[scottmoyse]

This may help: http://designandmotion.net/autodesk/mfg-pages/inventor/inventor-navigating-the-library-assembly-mine...

[waynehelley]

Hi there,

I was just wondering if you have found a solution to this problem since this thread?

I am using Inventor/Vault 2011 and am aware that since 2011, the integration between Vault and iparts/iassemblies have been improved but has the problem been fixed?

I am working as part of a team on a major reconstruction of company data (5 of us have been working for 6 months). Nearly everything we have modelled has been in iparts and iassemblies as the company is hoping to have a top level assembly that will be nice and easy to swap and change sub-assemblies based on customer requirements (it's quite complex as there are iparts within iassemblies within iassemblies within iassemblies within...)

In reality changing members from the top level will be very difficult since, absolutely ANY change to any of the ipart/iassembly factories will mean that the member files are out of date. Inventor will be aware of this and will attempt to regenerate the file, overwriting the out of date member. This will not work as the member is set to read-only by Vault and this will grind everything to a stop.

The only way to get things to run smoothly would be to keep all member files up to date but in reality this will not happen as some of the tables are huge (I have an iassembly factory with 500 members which takes a day to regenerate all member files) so people are bound to be lazy and not regenerate the members upon making minor edits.

It is possible to check out absolutely everything from Vault to enable it to be possible to edit the top level assembly but this will cause problems if multiple users need the same files.

If I could go to the start of the project, I would push to not use iparts/iassemblies at all. Instead I would model everything then look into creating an iLogic interface to create assemblies from the top level.

Does anyone have any advice??

Thanks,

Wayne