T&P - Piping Run is Self-Intersecting

[ASI_Aaron]

OK, I'll need someone to explain this to me.  In the embedded picture, I have a very straight forward piping run.  All my route lines are parallel to my origin planes, so I know I'm set there.  Every time I populate this route, I get a Self-Intersecting error.  There are no route lines close to touching AT ALL.

Anyone have any ideas why I would get this error?

[fspialek]

I am also having this issue. Has a solution been found? What I find frustrating is that when the error pops up you cannot look at your assembly and see where it occurred. Once you close the error the pipes and fittings disappear. It would be nice if you could see an error glyph or have the option to resolve it while keeping the route populated up to the point of the error.
_______________________________
-Francis-
Inventor (Product Design Suite 2013)
2.4 ghz Intel Core i7
16 GB RAM
Windows 7 Pro x64
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M 1GB DDR5

[ASI_Aaron]

Hello Francis.  I have yet to find a solution to this.  If you right click on your route, you can have IV highlight the areas that are problematic.  I have done this and it just highlights a straight line for me.  You can try this with your assembly as it might not be the same as mine.

And yes, the fittings and everything do just disappear when you OK the error message.  Doesn't make it any easier....

[cbenner]

Can either of you post your assemblies here?  Do a pack and go so everything is there, and post it in this forum?  Hard to tell what might be going on from just a picture.

[ASI_Aaron]

Hello Chris.  When I get a chance later this morning, I will definitely post my assembly.  At the moment, I am off to lovely morning meetings...

[cbenner]

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@ASI_Aaron wrote:

Hello Chris.  When I get a chance later this morning, I will definitely post my assembly.  At the moment, I am off to lovely morning meetings...

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Hey, have fun with that! 

[fspialek]

Hello again. I was able to eventually find the problematic run. Aaron- I have tried right clicking, but all I get is a quick menu with no option for this. Maybe I am not understanding it correctly.
I eventually found the problem section after several hours of downtime. The assemblies are for large water parks, so finding one problem section has been extremely difficult since one run can go well over 100 ft.
I had to delete each section out of the route and re-populate it to figure out which one it was. As far as I could tell, there was nothing about it that should have thrown this error. Sorry this doesn't help any.

I know it would seem easier to delete the route and re-run it, but not in this case. I group several routes together in order to keep my browser hierarchy simpler; grouping based on the area. Since there are so many runs in one area, I would hate to have to create a new run for each route as a work-around for this.

[ASI_Aaron]

No problem Francis.  I had to do the exact same thing you did by deleting and starting over.

What I'm meant by the right click on the route (I am unsure if 2013 has this in the right click menu) is show in the pic below: (You have to be in the parent route to view this menu on the route itself)

This will bring up a window that will list the violations within the route.  Like this:

I do have 2014, but haven't installed yet.  I am only ASSUMING this menu is the same.

Chris, I haven't forgot about attaching my files here.  Yesterday turned out to be worse than expected.  If I get time today, I will get these uploaded...

[cbenner]

Your post gave me an idea.  The violation showed a minimum segment length violation.  Sometimes, in editing a route that is fully constrained, you may move something too far and cause the neighboring sement to actually overlap the preceding one.  Hard to explain, but you end up with two route segments occupying the same spot... physics doesn't like this, and the route fails horribly.  The problem is in finding where these segments are.  The only way to do that is to edit the route and click on each segment.  If there are overlapping segments, it will be fairly obvious.  You can sometimes fix it by changing some of your dimensions or constraints.  Sometime it gets so fubar that you have no choice but to start deleting segments and adding them back in.  Rework sucks, but if you can fix it in the route, that's better than replacing the entire route or run.

This could also actually BE a min segment violation.  In your tube and pipe styles, on the rules tab, you can set min and max lengths for pipes.  If the position of a fitting causes a violation, you will see a route failure like this.

[fspialek]

Hi Aaron. thank you for showing that. I was able to get that option in the context menu after duplicating your error, but not with the self-intersecting run error. For some reason the run is not highlighted in red or showing an error. The error pops up when you populate the run. Once you "OK" the error it disappears and the run looks normal (no errors). Strange, but I can't find an explanation why it wouldn't show the error before populating. I got the error on a segment that was attaching to a pre-placed fitting, which seems similar to your original screenshot.

[romeo_alex_ciontos]

This program is literally a piece of ****. Stop using it guys. It sucked the life out of me in the university where we learned to use this useless piece of crap. Solidworks is 1000 levels better than this garbage which pops unreasonable errors.

[-Aaron-]

All depends on how you use it.  Any particular errors you'd like to share?

[shawn.payne]

I had this problem on a self draining route. I had a segment of the route constrained wrong causing the pipe and elbow to overlap.

[cbenner]

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@romeo_alex_ciontos wrote:

This program is literally a piece of ****. Stop using it guys. It sucked the life out of me in the university where we learned to use this useless piece of crap. Solidworks is 1000 levels better than this garbage which pops unreasonable errors.

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Nice rant, and trust me I know a good rant when I see it, having authored a few myself.  I'm genuinely sorry that you're having trouble, but we can't help you here without some specifics.  Simply telling us to cut and run is not exactly productive... especially since most of us don't have that option.  There are many people here who would love to help you with Inventor T&P if you are still having trouble.  I would suggest beginning a new thread for each individual problem (or group of them)... that way it's easier to address them one at a time and post solutions for others to find later.  Include as much information as possible including what version you're using, hardware specs, and any screenshots or videos demonstrating the problem you are having.

Good luck!

[fspialek]

I am using Inventor 2018 and I still get this pipe run error sometimes. The issue is that it can take hours away from productivity, because there is no easy way to resolve it. Our company has been using Inventor for nearly 10 years. For the amount that is charged for the license, I would hope that problems like these get resolved in the new releases. However, this and other problems I reported in the forums still remain an issue. Frustration is one thing, but when it comes to meeting deadlines for projects, it is beyond just being frustrated. We are looking to upgrade to the most current version sometime this year. I reported this issue back in 2013. 7 years later it still exists. Tell me, is it worth it to upgrade?