Help with Part Builder on network please!

[tmcmannis]

Hi everyone. We've been working on developing network parts for the past few weeks now, and everything has worked great. However, as of friday, all that has changed, for me at least. On startup I get the following error with the civil 3D splash screen "RUNTIME PART PARAMETER CONFIGURATION ERROR, PARAMETER NAME = STYPE"

STYPE is a variable we've been using to help name/label our structures in plan and profile. No one else is getting this error and parts validate just fine for them. As far as I know my network permissions have not been altered, and I am still pathed to the correct directory. I have also not made any changes to the support paths or other settings since this error started occurring.

We are currently running Civil 3D 2014, and according to the help drop-down we are up to date with support patches and such. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Tristan

[BrianHailey]

First thing I would try is a repair install. Sounds like a support file got altered or deleted. Often times a repair install will fix that for you. Also, it shouldn't mess with any of your user settings like an uninstall reinstall would.

[tmcmannis]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the suggestion. We may try that soon, but as of last night we had other users who were working all day without a problem, but by evening were having the same issue I am. I originally thought it might be a corrupted install, but am now thinking it may be something else now that everyone else is having the same issue.

[kcobabe]

Stype = Structure Type.  Do you have a structure that is not defined by Civil 3D?

[tmcmannis]

We have created custom structures that are part of our new network parts list. They worked fine until about a week ago. The STYPE parameter is a custom parameter we are using to pass the structure type to our labels. This way we only have to number the structures instead of manually typing JB-20, or CB-19. The strange thing is there is still one person that it is working for. This morning I verified our prototype template that Civil 3D opens to contains the parts lists, and it does. Any thoughts you have on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[kcobabe]

By chance have you recently upgraded?  Has everyone rebuilt and validated the catalog?

[tmcmannis]

Im not sure what you mean "has everyone rebuilt and validated the catalog?" Not everyone is configured for it yet, but those who are have had their part builder library re-pathed to the network location and are using part lists that reference those parts. Currently, we have avoided mixing previous versions of our parts with the new ones. Does this answer your question? Thanks again.

[kcobabe]

Have you regened and tested the catalog?

[tmcmannis]

Yes, still no luck 😞

[kcobabe]

Wish I could be of more help, but without the catalog anything right now would be just guessing.  I have seen the error that you are talking about, but the custom variable was fixed when I tested the catalog.  Maybe open one of the parts and see if it validates okay would be the only think I can think of left to do 

[tmcmannis]

OK, so I did some more testing, and when I changed the path for our prototype from the network custom one we have, back to the standard that ships with C3D the error went away. Looks like I've narrowed it down to someting with that file in particular. If I can actually isolate and solve the problem Il post the result here for others. Thanks.

[kcobabe]

By chance do you have Parts List in your prototype drawing?  If you do I have found that this is not a good idea.  For some reason if you do a lot of custom parts C3D hates a parts list to be already in the drawing template.

Part of the reason I killed the pre defined networks and the parts list they link to.  Helps your operators learn how to use them efficiently anyway.

[tmcmannis]

Yes, our parts lists do live in the prototype. Never had an issue with previous releases...I wonder why it is a  problem in 2014. I will try removing the parts list from the main prototype. So do you keep a separate pipe prototype then with the correct styles and parts?