Make element of a component pattern containing a component pattern Independent missing

[CattabianiI]

Element of a component pattern containing a component pattern cannot be made Independent.
Check the image below:

How can I achieve that? (no iLogic)

[sundars]

Hi @CattabianiI 

Thank you for reporting this. This has been like that since the inception of component pattern of patterns back from 2009. I personally don't see why it shouldnt work. In fact I removed the logic which blocks the cmd and it worked fine for me. I need to dig into some history and see if there were any technical limitations which prevent this from working properly.

This is what you want....

Thanks

-shiva

[CattabianiI]

Hi @sundars,

thank you for your answer! (very dev-oriented and I loved it.)

Yes that is want I want. 

The main purpose of my question is to know what Autodesk thinks is correct, because the indipendent thing is still doable via iLogic. And I use that API in my command, so what I want to know is whether someday that property will throw an exception because the API behaviour has been fixed accordingly with the UI one.

I'm, personally, ok at them moment with thr API - while I'm rather suprised no one has raised the UI issue so far - but please let me know when you have more information on the issue.

[sundars]

Thank you @CattabianiI . I greatly appreciate your comments 🙂

You are correct. The API/iLogic does not seem to have this limitation and you are free to make the elements of a comp pattern of a pattern independent.

Typically the UI comes first and added the right checks but when the API was implemented, it did not add that extra check to block comp patterns from being made elements. The story is that some things may not work properly wrt to downstream editing of that pattern once its made independent.

I played around the component pattern AFTER it was made independent.....and I find that the editing of this pattern to add new elements is a little confusing. The preview shows the parent pattern elements being changed 

For example

1. Edit that independent comp. pattern

2. Change the number of elements from 2 -> 4

3. The preview shows the parent pattern also changing from 2 -> 4

    (Here I would have expected the independent instance ONLY to show the new elements in preview)

4. Hit OK

5. Parent pattern also shows the edits 

    (Here I would have expected the independent instance ONLY to show the new elements)

I am still verifying whether this behavior is acceptable or not. My guess is that this is exactly the kind of behavior the original author wanted to avoid.

I have attached some images showing the behavior I described above. I have also attached a sample VBA - you can perhaps create a simple dataset and run that VBA. That simply runs through the comp. patterns and makes the elements independent. Then you will be able to try some UI edits and study the behavior and see if it makes sense.

Thanks

-shiva

[sundars · Accepted solution]

Hi @CattabianiI 

I have created a story for us to investigate - please refer to INVGEN-64774. Thank you so much for reporting this.

-shiva

[Yijiang.Cai · Accepted solution]

@sundars @CattabianiI Many thanks for you providing the feedback here, and this is also requested in the idea https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-ideas/make-elements-in-a-pattern-nested-within-another-patte...

You can also vote it.

We will also review the story for further investigation.

[CattabianiI]

Hi @sundars,

---

The story is that some things may not work properly wrt to downstream editing of that pattern once its made independent.

Yeah, it doesn't seems to work very smoothly after making element indipendent.
Here's a video of Inventor crashing after making an element indipendent (via iLogic) and deleting (via delete key) the parent pattern in a recursive way.

Here's the report ID: 331983148

The workaround is to do the make elements independent + occpattern delete backwards (the depth doesn't matter, the breadth does!)

[sundars]

@CattabianiI Thanks for the info. I have updated the story with the crash error report information. That's good to have :).