Infinitely Loading When Opening Assemblies

[cstarker6VCG4]

Inventor has developed the lovely habit of loading infinitely, requiring a hard close, when opening assemblies from either Vault or the model tree. Memory and CPU usage remains normal. I can't wait to see if it will resolve unattended and am forced to restart Inventor to fix it which is not guaranteed. There is no error message or pattern to this other than it happens about every fifth open. Of course, this is insanely disruptive.

I assume the latest patch was the cause.

[mluterman]

Try diagnosing this by making a dedicated Project file pointing only to the areas (read: folders) of concern.
Secondly, do a pack-and-go on the project and place it on your desktop and see if it you can open it locally with no issues (you might want to also make a dedicated Project file pointing to your local drive if needed; to isolate it from the server-if you have your files stored there).

[cstarker6VCG4]

Even if this solved it, I can't use this advice. This project is used by many other engineers who have no problems. There is no way I can edit the project file at this time.

[mluterman]

Just a thought - do the other engineers have the latest patch also? Otherwise, it seems like the issue is with your machine/setup.

[cstarker6VCG4]

I assume they do. They also have regular issues of many kinds. It's not their responsibility to help me with Autodesk's stability issues.

[Frederick_Law]

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@cstarker6VCG4 wrote:

I assume they do. They also have regular issues of many kinds. It's not their responsibility to help me with Autodesk's stability issues.

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That's part of trouble shooting.

Lot's of times, during trouble shooting user found out it's not a problem with the software.

Sometime user found how to recreate the problem and fix in next patch.

Of course there are times user can't find or reproduce the problem.

You miles might vary 😉

[cstarker6VCG4]

There's been a miscommunication here. I can't bother other engineers with my problem. Any solutions that require another client are out. I came here to report the problem to AutoDesk and for advice on what I alone can do.

[andrewiv]

When you say infinitely loading, do you mean that it is locked up and won't respond?  When this happens, and you click in the Inventor window do you hear a ding sound?

[cstarker6VCG4]

It's not frozen, but my cursor is in "load only" mode and nothing can be interacted with via cursor or keyboard. Windows does NOT consider it to be unresponsive. I don't have sound enabled so I don't know if there is a dinging sound.

[andrewiv]

OK, see if this works.  When it locks up like that, Press Alt+Space and then the M key and then press and hold the left or right arrow key for a few seconds and then move your mouse.  If a dialog box has popped up off the screen it will behave in a similar fashion to what you're describing and using this method it will bring the dialog back on the screen and then you can interact with it.

[cstarker6VCG4]

This brought up a search for every folder, application, and shortcut that starts with "M" and that's hundreds of results... not helpful. I am pretty sure there is no off-screen message because nothing of the sort shows up in the Alt-Tab window summary.

[BDCollett]

Ok first, as I did not see it mentioned at all. What version of Inventor/Vault. Can we assume by "latest patch" you mean Inventor 2025.1?

[cstarker6VCG4]

Not the latest, I guess.

[BDCollett]

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@cstarker6VCG4 wrote:

Not the latest, I guess.

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2024.3.1 is the latest for 2024 

Try updating to that first.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! We have heard similar complaints of this behavior for years. But we cannot reproduce it internally. I don't think it is specific to an update or a release. It could be related to the local environment.

Here is something I would try. Close Inventor and go to Windows Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> Environment Variables -> create "DYNAMIC_LOAD_APPLETS" and set it to 0.

By setting this variable, Inventor will load all core dlls on startup (it may slow down start up a second or two, mostly negligible), as opposed to loading dlls on demand.

Does it work better now?

Many thanks!

[cstarker6VCG4]

Dang. I did what you said and it's still happening.

Is there some way to force Inventor to dump it's memory so we have something to work with? The lack of an error message is really hampering this.

I just realized that this is almost exclusively happening when deleting parts from an assembly. I hope that helps.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Does it happen to a particular assembly or any assembly? This could be file-specific. You may need to share the files with me johnson.shiue@autodesk.com so I can understand the behavior better.

Many thanks!

[cstarker6VCG4]

It happens once for nearly every assembly I open since it started. It's important to note that it never happens more than once per session per assembly. If it was only a single assembly, I would not post about it.

[cstarker6VCG4]

This is happening for every 3rd assembly now and getting worse. Re-opening or restarting almost never fixes it. I'm getting pretty close to re-installing Inventor now.

I have cleared every temp folder related to Inventor I can find. Could this be related to our Vault database?

This is an insane bug. I have no choice but to bump this thread continuously until a proper fix is posted/patched in.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! Then I suggest you install Microsoft Process Monitor and record a log of opening the assembly. Share the log with me (johnson.shiue@autodesk.com) directly. The log might help pinpoint where the exact issue is.

Many thanks!