Level of Detail

[pdecker]

I looked at several posts where it seems most people are using LOD for the wrong purpose. I believe I am using it as intended but have issues.

Background

We are a Vault user.

Our Top Level assemblies are typically over 1000 parts (several hundred unique) and can range to over 100,000 parts (with several thousand unique).

I [try to] use LODs due to the large files.

Work is proprietary so I cannot provide any files.

Here's the issues;

Top Level is checked out. I virtually never use the Master LOD due to size. I get messages when checking in that I either have another LOD open and must save that one first (I have NO other files open) OR it won't check in because there are files that have to be saved first (that file is checked out by a member of my team). I also get red text in Vault browser for files that were just "downloaded" from Vault to an empty local drive. How is it that a file that I just open already claims it has "changes" that I have to save before checking in? Or I'll have files that immediately show up with the green dot? I have found that it helps if I clear the green dots (by checking out and back in again) but I haven't actually done anything to them.

I may have digressed a little because I believe I have several issues. If anyone cares to help, I'd be happy to elaborate.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry to say but this is a very nasty bug/limitation or whatever you want to call it in Inventor.  It makes LOD absolutely useless.  At our shop we had to ban it all together.  AD is well aware of it but they haven't done anything to fix it in years.  Really a bad situation in my opinion.  There's no way around it.

We had to resort to just using view representations which do not help memory usage etc. that LOD is supposed to be good for.

My advice.  Don't use it at all.

It's all part of a larger problem where Inventor clearly does not know what has changed and what hasn't and constantly forces you to save stuff that hasn't changed.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@pdecker

Lets first tackle why your files need to be saved...

Open one of the files that Inventor thinks needs to be saved from your LOD assembly.  Select Inventor Help and About Inventor.  When the about Inventor information pops up select CTRL (key)+D...  You will then see this dialog

  It will then tell you why Inventor needs to save that given file.  Granted some of the options sare cryptic but at least it will tell you why it needs to be save.

[Anonymous]

Even if the reason for the need to save unchanged files is figured out you're still faced with not being able to save real changes because "another level of detail is being edited".  This becomes are real problem when working with drawings because you can't save the drawing without closing the assembly associated with it ever time which is not practical in many cases.

If Autodesk doesn't intend to fix this, they should just take the feature out.  Otherwise new users are led to believe LOD is a working feature when it is NOT.  Then they discover many hundreds of hours later that they went the wrong direction when modeling and wasted a bunch of time.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi pdecker,

One of the biggest causes of the "this file needs to be saved, even though I've done nothing to it..." problem occurs when files in the Vault are not migrated to the version of Inventor you are working with.

Meaning for example if we're using Inventor 2016, but many of the files in Vault were last saved in Inventor 2015. So when we open the file, Inventor checks to see if it has been saved in the version we're using and sets a "flag" if not. This "smudges" the file, and now Vault thinks it needs to be saved before check in.

...or something along those lines (I might have the exact particulars a little bit off),. To deal with this you can set up a task using the Task Scheduler to

check out, migrate, check back in, the files in Vault and run it overnight.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[pdecker]

I have found that clearing all green dots (which is usually a library migration issue) solves a lot of problems but not this one. Migration is a pain (my IT department migrates the library on new releases but I'm not sure it works right).

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi pdecker,

Did you happen to look at the Diagnostics tool that Mark Lancaster mentioned?  You would open the files that are causing the issue, and look to run that tool from them (rather than running it from the top level assembly).

I would be interested in seeing if you have identify how the file is being "smudged". I have a similar issue that I've been looking into:

By the way, concerning migration. There are 2 steps to the migration that need to be done:

• Migrating the database
• Migrating the file store 

Both steps for your standard parts and your Content Center parts.

I think that often times only half of it gets done (most often the database) and that leaves us having migration related issues, even though we've been told the migration has been done.

Inventor Data Migration

http://help.autodesk.com/view/INVNTOR/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-FB9B4422-2348-46FA-964B-7845D9D96018

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com