Family Table Expressions not working

[FRPCAD]

I recently refreshed my content center on a rather large assembly before I checked in into the vault to ensure that everything was up to date. When the refresh was complete all of the Rigid Conduit that was in my main assembly and sub-assemblies had changed to a consistent length of 8". Drawings had already been created for it and it's sub-assemblies so this was a major issue. This in turn also affected constraints through out multiple assemblies.

After investigating I found that the expressions in the family table were not working resulting in a common length of 8" for all parts in the table. When I tried to delete the 8" length and let the expression rebuild it everything reverted to 0" length for all conduit. When I checked it again all of the length column entries had black text as if they were hard entries and not "results" of the expression.

Luckily we have and older version of this same file and it seems that the expressions in this one are working.

Using the old version of this part is only a fix for this assembly. The "new" part has been in use for over a year and is in multiple assemblies that may have to be edited at some point. Replacing this every time we have to incorporate a minor change will not be acceptable. I also have a fear that this problem may grow to affect our pipe parts because those are the parts that we use most frequently.

After checking with a coworker they are having the same problem with a part that is a channel.

Has anyone seen this and if so do you know a fix?

We are using Inventor Professional 2017 R2.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@FRPCAD

Autodesk has been investigating some odd behaviors with Inventor 2017 and content center.  I haven't seen this issue being reported yet but it could be related.  I currently don't have anything setup right now to confirm your findings and hopefully someone else will.  I will tag @cbenner since he came across one the CC issues the other day that Autodesk is working on.  He may already have the formula setup in his CC  and will be able to weigh in on the subject matter.

[cbenner]

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@Mark.Lancaster wrote:

@FRPCAD

Autodesk has been investigating some odd behaviors with Inventor 2017 and content center.  I haven't seen this issue being reported yet but it could be related.  I currently don't have anything setup right now to confirm your findings and hopefully someone else will.  I will tag @cbenner since he came across one the CC issues the other day that Autodesk is working on.  He may already have the formula setup in his CC  and will be able to weigh in on the subject matter.

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What I ran into the other day was this:  I have several families in my CC which do not have all of the part numbers assigned.  We created a family with all available sizes, but maybe never used one particular size, so it was not in our purchasing system yet.  Under part number we enter "NEED".  As we get new part number assigned, I edit the CC to add that info.  I was adding a part number for a 3" elbow the other day, and every time I entered the number, the entire line in the family table changed from 3" to 6"... including all tabulated dimensions, descriptions etc.  There is no correlation or link to any other family in my CC, so there was no reason for this to be happening.  @Mark.Lancaster informed me that this was one of the known issues.

I have not yet had the chance to fix the table with a workaround, my plate is so full it's spilling over onto the floor... but I will get there one day, I hope.

[FRPCAD]

My coworker has been on the phone with our Autodesk representative to try and recreate the issue with them on a shared desktop.  I will attach the document with the steps she performed to recreate the issue. I think it gives a very detailed description of what is happening.

[FRPCAD]

The representative that my coworker spoke with has said that after discussing the issue with a colleague they believe that the problem is because we are making "a copy of a copy" and that we should open the part and do a "save copy" from there. We both believe that the representative is confused about what we are doing because we do not have a "part" to open. We did not author these parts. They are copies of part families within the content center itself. Beyond that these are parts that have worked for years through many versions of Inventor without issue.

[skylinejeff]

This sounds similar to the catastophic problems I've had with custom content in IV2017.  I've used Custom content since 2014, and this is the only release that CCenter is 100% broken and unusable.

Hoping Autodesk comes up with the solution quick.  I have a suspicion that the issue is related to the "row identifier" hidden properties of each row in a family that Autodesk uses to compile the XML definitions of each family.  Somehow the xml file is not being rebuilt properly after changes are made, and I'm guessing it has something to do with the row identifier not being linked with the correct row copy of the family.

Honestly, I'm really only commenting here to bring this thread to the top and keep Autodesk on notice that content center actually, non-rhetorically broken in 2017.

And I'm praying for a solution.  Soon.

[FRPCAD]

UPDATE:

We are being told that Autodesk has identified the problem as a sorting issue within the content center editor. Any time one of the columns is sorted it looses its link to the expression. They have notified us that they are trying to get a fix in the form of an update.

We are keeping our fingers crossed because this has had a major impact on our productivity.

[Jessica.Lamb]

I updated this morning. It appears to be working so far.

[Sofia.Xanthopoulou]

Hi @FRPCAD,

can you please install the update and report back?

Thank you

[FRPCAD · Accepted solution]

The update does fix the overall problem of the expressions not working and now content center parts are editable. I am a little leery because when you are editing a cell the column will shift or resort however it still seems to be working.

I did find that columns with existing custom expressions had to changed to be a non-expression column and then set up again to work properly. Otherwise the text stays black and will not update.

Overall I believe the main problem is fixed however I think we will keep a close eye on it.

[Sofia.Xanthopoulou]

Thank you @FRPCAD, for sharing your experience with the readers. 

I have marked your answer as accepted solution in order to bring it to the top and make it more visible for everybody. Please contact me, if you have any concerns.

Best regards