Material library problems all coming home to roost

[Anonymous]

Have been getting errors opening stuff where it's saying that the material is missing and a generic material has been applied.  Cannot save to the library any more, as I get a warning that it is "damaged."

Existing Library size

Attempting to Migrate?

What I get!What I want, haveNew Library Size (without any of my custom materials)

[Anonymous]

le domage

[ChrisMitchell01]

Hi James,

The material/appearance library migration is only required for migrating pre-2013 colors/materials (xml based) to the new adsklib format. You don't need to migrate any custom adsklib files from one release tot he next. The adsklib file can simply be moved into place in your new Design Data folder.

From your images it implies that you've customized the Inventor material/appearance library which you shouldn't really do.

Can you clarify what you are trying to achieve here ?

Thanks,
Chris

[Anonymous]

Yes - we have heavily customized materials  - it is how our nesting software knows what materials to use when directly importing sheet metal parts (the flat patterns,) and machined/tube/etc... parts (we make a fake flat part in an assembly, it has the correct material applied, and nests onto material in a similar fashion as a cut part.)  Very slick.

It's the styles that I can't write right now, which is for sheetmetal thicknesses, what have you.

I only tried migrating as I hoped it would "launder" any errors out of these files - ie invoke a read-rewrite process.

[ChrisMitchell01]

The sheetmetal styles (xml file) also references the material library file so the issue could still be due to your materials file. Do you have a backup of your Design Data folder from prior to these efforts ? In theory you should just be able to put that whole directory structure in place to use with a new release, for quick verification purposes. If all works Ok then I would suggest that you use the Styles Migration wizard to migrate custom styles from the previous release to the new release. This works for all styles with the exception of custom materials/appearances - those adsklib files can simply be reused from the last release to the next.

Hope this helps,
Chris

[Anonymous]

I just started here a few months ago - the backup would have needed to be before these flaky errors started appearing, we certainly weren't doing it with regularity.  It's something that went from what I thought was a problem with how styles were applied to later on the realization that we had a possibly corrupt file(s.)

I was also working with the styles migration wizard.  I'll try to put something together.

We need these custom materials - this has been working for years since before my time.  I don't know what to do if I have to go back to the vanilla materials list...

[Anonymous]

This was the error that started it all...

[Anonymous]

made a new library... set up a fake project to try it with...

does autodesk have on site support?

[ChrisMitchell01]

Have you tried creating a new style library using the Inventor Style Library manager ? (Start, programs, Autodesk, Inventor 2018, Tools) ? That should enable you to create a new clean library & then merge in your existing good styles from your current damaged library. it may help you to understand which style is corrupt.

If you know xml you can also try opening the style xml file directly & that may help you to understand what the issue is.

-Chris

[Anonymous]

I'd be happy to take a look at this for you.  We have this same problem with Inventor here.

[Anonymous]

I have created a new one using the manager, but I just used the old one as the basis so it copied it all over.

I guess I'll create a new blank one, axe all of the stuff I don't need, then create a local file, copy the styles I want over to it, then start bleeding them into the new library.

[kelly.young]

@Anonymous did creating a blank library and copying the styles work for you?

Everything I've seen with damaged files leads me to believe creating a new one and copying/recreating is the best course of action.

Possibly create a screencast of your workflow to highlight where the errors are occurring.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if a post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

Nothing has worked.  I've tried every configuration of this rubic's cube.   I have not yet started from complete scratch - honestly I don't know how far these tentacles reach.  Do I need to throw my drawing and file templates out as well?  Probably.

Since autodesk literally has no solution and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, I am bringing in the "big guns...." my resellers!

😕

[johnsonshiue]

Hi James,

Do you mind sharing the unmigrated material and appearance library files? I would like to try the migration myself and see the behavior.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

That would be cool - I will make a package up for you and send a dropbox link. 🙂

[johnsonshiue]

Hi James,

I have pulled down the files you shared with me. I do see those "number-based" material styles. The style content seems to be incomplete. Do you remember how these styles were created or migrated? Do you have the pre-migrated material styles so I can reproduce the behavior from scratch?

Many thanks!

[Xun.Zhang]

Hi James,

Sorry for late to this thread, is that possible to share your Color.xml and material.xml combined with your sheetmetal presets to me as well? It seems a material from sheetmetal rule mismatching the material from library happen when migrate material from xml to adsklib file.

It would be great if you can provide a sample sheetmetal file for us before migration.

Hope to work it out soon.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

James sent me all his info and all the files, and I'll have to say, it's all very, very troubling.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I will try to find some older stuff to send you guys, as well as what I have already sent out.   Again, I came in late to the game and there was a lot of operations on these files before I started working here.

[Xun.Zhang]

Hi James,

Files were well-received one day ago and a full investigation was done.

Here is a summary for a quick update:

1. The system library for Inventor (Inventormateriallibrary.adsklib) was in unstable state, please do no write any customized assets to this library and the guideline as below, you can drag all of them to a new user library and replace with the right one enclosed to the right directory. 

Enclosed the original Inventor material library here and to replace in the directory (take the default project as an example) -

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Autodesk\Inventor xxxx\Design Data\Materials

Please avoid saving any customized asset to system library which might corrupt the library and there is no way to repair.

Tips-

You'd better to create a customer library for any of customized assets. Regard to customized library (*.adsklib) file is compatible from release to release without migration process, which means, it can be open in higher version. If you want to share the library, then, Just make sure all clients are the same version of INVENTOR, you can also set the file as read only to lock it up, then, only the admin can provide modification to keep the library in good condition. BY the way, make a copy of this file would be a great backup plan for any time. Be sure to set the library as active library for both Material and appearance to make it works better in project setting.

2. Material migration process is based on Inventor library which means the process is comparing assets to create new assets to your new migrated library, so if Inventor material library were corrupted already which may lead to migration corrupted as well. so I've replace the healthy Inventor material in design data and migrate the xmls again, the new migrated library was enclosed as well.

3. Please create a new project and set the new migrated library as default for both Material and Appearance setting, make sure the option for Use style library = Read-Write.

4. Migrate template file to current version and then launch Task scheduler to update the template with update design task.

5. Style confliction dialog is design intents due to material migration, please ignore it.

6. Regard to save sheet metal rule, it shows as unable to save due to damaged sheetmetal rule xml file. If you replace with health Inventor material library in step 1, create new sheetmetal from the template, there is a warning as below which indicated that your original xml files migration do not contains those material assets, that's the case shows sheetmetal rule is not based on the newly migrated library at all. 

From above steps, finally realized that it is not a migration case at all, it is just a case of corrupted sheetmetal rule xml.

So just guess, you had migrated material xmls to Inventor material library directly before and you make modification for those assets in Inventor material library which caused the Inventor material library corrupted (No thumbnails for the corrupted assets) already before. Because of the corruption, the sheet metal rule xml also corrupted, you have to manually recovere the sheet metal rule xml and reassign proper material for each rule and then save it, but it indeed a data corruption case, no luck to recover it finally. again, please do not put any customized asset to Inventor material library. 

7. There is no better way to handle, please export the sheetmetal rule one by one and re-import to a clean sheetmetal xml one by one, sorry for that. please get the clean sheet metal xmls from enclosed file.

Hope it helps!