Extrude Difficulties

[Student92]

I have a sketch on a face of a block that has three rectangles that are fully constrained and sitting on the corner of the block. What I want is to use the extrude command to cut some notches into the block with the rectangles. 

Here's where things get odd: If I select those rectangles with extrude, they will properly extrude out, however, when I change it to cut, only one will visually show that it is cutting, but if I press okay, it will say "The attempted operation had problems trimming and discarding faces. Try with different inputs." 

So, to count it up:

-Extrude with all rectangles works.

-Cut with all rectangles brings errors

-Individual cutting works. Extruding individually as well. 

I need this to work in one operation to limit confusion, keep things clean and keep workflow the same as other parts I'm making. 

Thank you for your time.

[JDMather]

Attach your *.ipt file here.

[Student92]

.... wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately this is for work and there's some hefty confidentiality agreements. I was moreso fishing for anyone having the same problem. I've just replicated the same circumstances in a simpler part and it works just fine. I guess it's just a freak problem.

[mrattray]

It's pretty much impossible to comment on what could cause this without the file or at bare minimum screenshots. Can you strip any proprietary data out of the model (a copy of course), maybe change some dimensions or something, and post that?
Perhaps, you could get permission from a superior? Posting work files here is something I've discussed with my boss before, he was very understanding and gave me permission to use my own judgment as to what was OK to post.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Does the behavior only happen at the particular spot? Or, it is all over the same model? If you extrude the three rectangular profiles as a New Solid, does it work? Is the part an imported part? If you want, you can send the file to me directly (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com) so I can take a look.

Thanks!

[Student92]

The rectangles happen to be constrained to profile sketches that are inserted as derived parts. Of the three, only one brings up the Recover button in the extrude option when I extrude them separately. The profile sketches have been brought in from AutoCAD and sometimes aren't 100% straight, which drives Inventor bonkers when you try to add constraints, so we've had to fiddle about to make sure that it still uses them. Perhaps it's that.

[Student92 · Accepted solution]

For anyone's future reference, I selected the rectangles one after another, starting with the one that worked with the cut extrude and added ones that worked with it until I found the problem profile. 

It seems that it didn't like a line that wasn't completed into a loop in a reference sketch, but more importantly, Inventor didn't like the colinear constraint to one of the profiles. As soon as I redid the rectangle to constrain to a projected line on the part, it worked just fine. 

Go figure.