iParts loosing data

[austinmiller.sb]

          Hello my name is Austin and I work for a coustome Towable RV factory called Forks RV and we have been using inventor to help us design our units. Inventor is a very important part of our work since every unit we build is unique. Inventor has been working fine until just recently. The issue is that our ipart tables are loosing part lengths. One day I will make an aluminum frame and and the next day when I open the file there are parts misssing and it says "Member deleted from factory". So I go and look in the ipart table and now the table has 73 parts instead of yeaterdays 340 + parts. The table is now different every time I open it. Me and my boss both checked the table for for errors in the table such as a member name not matching the part name, and so on but found no errors. So we decided to add the missing parts into the table and then we started getting errors that there are duplicate parts or "member name is not unique". This by the way occured after we checked the table for the lengths and they were not there so we added them. It gave us no errors at first but later in the day of later in the week we will get erors showing that the file names are not unique. After a 3 days of having these errors we called our network specialists because we assumed our servers, or our network was somehow loosing data, or using old tables. The specialists went to work and found absolutly nothing wrong with the servers, there were no viruses, or any errors at all. So we went back to assuming that we had done something wrong with the tables, so we went back and looked at the data again but there simply was nothing wrong with the tables.

          Now thats i have expressed the problems that we are having I want to discuss what the best solution to this problem may be. We currently are using Inventor 2014 and we will soon be upgrding to 2015. Is there a limit to haw many parts an ipart table can hold before it starts to get flakey, our largest table only has around 350 parts. If this is an issue with 2014 when we upgrade to 2015 will the tables still be loosing data? 

We really need a solution because we need to keep feeding data down to our busy assembly line, and we are quickly loosing time with having to recreate parts and deleting them not to mention inventor crashing at least 2 times a day because it cant deal with too many duplicate parts or missing ipart lengths.

Thank you for reading and if you have any ideas for fixes or if you have ever experianced an issue like this please imput your thoughts.

If any files are needed to test to see if its a table issue just let me know and I will provide some. 

[mcgyvr]

There are some limits but you aren't even close.. (1000 rows for the table based on an Inventor limit)

http://beinginventive.typepad.com/being-inventive/2010/05/ipart-claustrophobia-in-excel.html

But thats not your problem.. not that I know what it really is..

First.. are you up to date on service packs/hotfixes for your version of Inventor.. (stuff happens and its always best to stay up to date)..

Second.. I've never seen rows not being there before..

Are you sure you are saving the files or that someone else isn't accessing them and deleting them?

Are you generating the members from the factory file after editing the ipart factory file? 

Have you checked in the associated member folder to see if the ipt files are still there for these missing members?

Have you tried to edit the table with excel vs the built in Inventor table? are they there then?

Are you using vault?

Are you creating these with ilogic or any other custom code?

Anything else special?

I've NEVER had a member disappear from the table. 

[karthur1]

Just so that you know, the 1,000 part limit that Mcgyvr mentioned is not a "hard" limit.  The file will still work even if you are past this limit.  I have a few iparts that are over 4k and they function just fine.  I just do not see the list when in the tree when I am editing the ipart parent file.

"So we decided to add the missing parts into the table and then we started getting errors that there are duplicate parts or "member name is not unique". "

If/when you see this, accecpt the error just so you can continue.  Then open the ipart table in excel and search for the member name (or filename) that is says is not unique.  You should find it in the list.

Are you doing anything with formulas in the excel table that could be causing this?

I have never seen rows disappear.  I have had someone edit the part and delete members by mistake.

Post the part if you can't get it straight.

Later,

Kirk

[mcgyvr]

---

@karthur1 wrote:

Just so that you know, the 1,000 part limit that Mcgyvr mentioned is not a "hard" limit.  The file will still work even if you are past this limit.  I have a few iparts that are over 4k and they function just fine.  I just do not see the list when in the tree when I am editing the ipart parent file.

Later,

Kirk

---

Did you see in the link I posted that you can adjust that 1000 part limit via a registry setting.

[karthur1]

I have know about that reg hack for years.  I will sometimes use it when I am editing the parent, but most of the time, I dont.  It slows the ipart down and makes the editing slow if I show all the members.

[austinmiller.sb]

We are positive we are that we are saving the rows because the part
is there with the correct length but it says that the ipart does not exist
which does not make any sense.

Yes we are up to date with our service packs.

We have checked the ipt files and the parts are missing like they
were never there to begin with.

We are not in vault yet because we have to convince the owners to
invest in Vault Professional. We have tried the free version and it will
not do the tasks we need done unless we get professional.

The way that it intermittently looses and gains files makes me
think that it is a network problem, but the Network "experts" say that
there is nothing wrong with the network or our server.

I appreciate your help and will look further into vault
professional, although if it is a hidden network problem im not sure how
well vault will run with our system. I do think however that im going to
try to run a test by uploading a part that contains a larger table onto
vault (the free version) and see if Parts are still vanishing. I am almost
certain that it is a network issue.


Thank you for your input

[mcgyvr]

A little confusion..

You say the parts are there then you say they aren't there.

And I'm not saying at all that vault will help.. I've just heard that iparts/iassemblies don't necesasrily play nice with Vault.. 

Are you generating the members after creation? That is the process that creates the member ipt files in the associated member file.

"maybe" you aren't doing that and its somehow causing this problem..

[karthur1]

Implimenting Vault will not solve this issue.  However, if you were using Vault, you could go back and get a prior version.  From that, you could get back the rows that have magically disappeared.

We are not in vault yet because we have to convince the owners to invest in Vault Professional. We have tried the free version and it will not do the tasks we need done unless we get professional.

I know vault is not the topic here, but I will say that if you are using a multiple user environment, I would recommend that you start using Vault.  Vault Basic is a great tool.  You can always move to Professional later very easily. The Vault discussion would be another thread either here or in the Vault forum.

The way that it intermittently looses and gains files makes me think that it is a network problem, but the Network "experts" say thatthere is nothing wrong with the network or our server.

I don't think the issue is your network either.  The reason is that the network just flows data from one place to another.  It does not go into the file and remove data.  If it did that, the data would be corrupt and the file probably would not even open in Inventor.

Are you familiar with the "Old Versions" folder?  Look in the old versions folder that is located in the same directory of your parent part (the one thats being edited).  See if there is a version of this file there.  Open this file as "Open old version".  Take a look at it and see if the rows are there.

Kirk

[austinmiller.sb]

Thank you kirk your information about networking was very helpful, i will
look into the "Old registries folder" we haven't thought of looking in
there yet. Ill post back if i have any more inquiries.