Assembly keeps crashing.

[mickingaamco]

I have spent months on a complicate assembly. When I update some subassembly, save it, and then try to update the main assembly level (get all latest), the system crashes, and many of the joints are broken, and parts are scattered in space. This has happened to me too many times. I delete the joints and create them again, and the problem happens again. I am frustrated!

Is there any way to put the model back together again?

Here is a suggestion for the developers:

The joint method is great for placing parts in their locations. However, the system is too buggy to be reliable for complicated assemblies. I have been working with this system for several months, and I continue to have problems. I would like to have a way of placing parts in a specific location without having any dependencies on the locations of other parts. These dependencies are sometimes problematic. For example, you might want to modify some part in a sub assembly, and that modification breaks the joint for something else, and now your entire model blows up. In Pro E we called these unintended dependencies. I used to work with One Space, a completely direct modeler. There were no dependencies unless you explicitly created them. You could modify a part without having to know its history. The modification would not affect other parts or assemblies unless you set them up to do that. That was the best program I have ever worked with. It was bought by Pro-e and is now called Creo. 

[TrippyLighting]

How would we possibly provide help with so much as a screenshot ?

Could yo make a screencast or could you share the design ?

Also, you can turn the timeline off completely and work only in direct modeling without these unintended dependencies. 

[jeff_strater]

Hi, @mickingaamco,

Thanks for your post.  Sorry to hear that joints are crashing on you.  We would like to dig in and see what we can find.  Would it be possible for us to share your design with us?  We would keep it confidential, of course, and only use it to debug your problems.  We can hopefully identify your problems, and fix bugs that we find in Fusion.  We may also be able to make some suggestions to improve your design and make it more stable.

Regarding "unintended dependencies", those are almost a fact of life in a parametric CAD system.  There are things you can do to manage these better, but yes, changes will sometimes cause downstream failures.  As @TrippyLighting says, though, Fusion supports a Direct Modeling workflow that is more like Creo.  It might be worth checking out.

If you want to share your design with just me, send me the link in a private message on this forum, and I'd be happy to take a look.

Jeff

[mickingaamco]

Sorry,
The design is confidential. Are there any tips on how to make joints within
assemblies and joints to join that assembly to other assemblies to make
things more robust?


Mike

[jeff_strater]

I understand the confidentiality concerns, @mickingaamco.  It would definitely help us track down the issue if we had access to the design, but that is clearly your right to decide.  I see your CERs, and they are definitely crashing in  joint-related code, so your analysis is correct.

Regarding some joint "best practices", I would only offer a couple of suggestions:

1. use as few joints as possible.  Instead of a bunch of Rigid Joints, I prefer Rigid Groups.  These do not have the geometry references that a regular Rigid Joint has.  This also lets you associate a bunch of components with one "joint" at the same time
2. As-Built Joints are usually more reliable than "regular" joints.  There are fewer geometry references that can break.

As to how to try to fix your design:  Most likely, there is one bad joint in your design that is causing you all the trouble.  If you can identify that joint and delete it, you are likely to be able to repair your design.

Another thing to try, kind of a long shot, is to just try a Compute All (under the Modify drop down in the tool bar).  We have seen cases where just this simple operation can rebuild internal data structures and caches, and can "fix" a design.  It doesn't always work, but is worth a try.

sorry there isn't more we can do.   I hope you are able to repair your design.

Jeff