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Materials - Eh!

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Message 1 of 21
Neil_Cross
1083 Views, 20 Replies

Materials - Eh!

So I migrated our Inventor 2012 style library into this stupid 'new' adsklib format, got that done, there they are working fine.  I have rights to edit it, I know this because I made it, now someone wants me to add a new material into the library... apparently:

 

"The library file is currently locked, multiple users have the same library file open, to unlock a library quit all applications on all computers that are currently using that library"

 

I beg your pardon, so each time I want to add a new material, I have to tell 120+ very busy engineers to close down their CAD applications, stop working completely whilst I add a new material??

 

Do me a favour ffs.

20 REPLIES 20
Message 2 of 21
Rory_M
in reply to: Neil_Cross

You're right, it's a real issue for us too and we've only got 4 licenses!

 

See also discussions about the issue here:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Inventor/2013-Materials-editor/td-p/3427407

 

Regards

 

Rory

 

Message 3 of 21
jletcher
in reply to: Neil_Cross

LOL yeah Autodesk going the wrong way. Inventor now has become the most hated with the release of 2012 and 2013. I have talked with people about Inventor and they would like to go with it but I showed them that they would have to get 2013. I did a demo for them with 2013 and they are going to look into other software now or just stay with autocad.

 

Autodesk you really messed up..you need to go back to interface of 2011 and take out all this crap you added this is a software for mechanical engineers not photoshop.......

 

 

The death of Inventor is soon to come...

Message 4 of 21
mflayler2
in reply to: jletcher

Well, you don't have to get 2013 if you buy it with subscription...

 

I agree on this Material Editor, I see the reason in the big picture, but it is hurting the core modeling program.

Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.

Mark Flayler - Engagement Engineer

IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog: https://resources.imaginit.com/manufacturing-solutions-blog

Message 5 of 21
jletcher
in reply to: mflayler2

Thats not what I was told plus it took the place I am setting up now 6 weeks to get 2012 and when we called from the other place they told us they cannot go back to 2012 because he has no seats of Inventor he was just autocad. I even talked to that guys boss he said the same thing.... So now we are going to have a pro-e wildfire guy come in see whats up with that.

 

Some of us just want to design Inventor has taken the fun out of it. And if any one knows me I loved Inventor even with the little bugs but start adding crap interfaces more clicks have to shut down the world to add hot roll material.

 

I use to eat sleep and drink it now I sh&t it.

Message 6 of 21
mflayler2
in reply to: Neil_Cross

The way subscription works is if you purchase a license of 2013 on subs you have rights to use three versions back from that release and continue to use that release back to 2010 as long as you stay on subscription.  When you drop subscription you have to go back to the most current version you purchased.  That is why some users can still use MDT2009 legally since they originally purchased 2009 on subs.

Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.

Mark Flayler - Engagement Engineer

IMAGINiT Manufacturing Solutions Blog: https://resources.imaginit.com/manufacturing-solutions-blog

Message 7 of 21
jletcher
in reply to: mflayler2

Well not what we was told plus he does not want subscription because right now he does not like the way Autodesk is going. See I let him read some of the threads and some blogs of inventor lovers that now are looking at wildfire. And he did not like what he read. See I let my clients know everything thats why the like me I don't lie to sell a product they have a job to do and Inventor is turning more into a movie maker than a mechanical soulution.

 

Sorry to say but I will no longer praise Inventor in fact I almost cry when I tell people to go look at wildfire I am waiting for my seat I have messed with it when it 1st came out so I will have to see what they done before I go a push that to clients. as of right now most of my clients are looking to drop the subscription. One has $26,000 a year in subscriptions and after the release of 2013 and 2012 they are now looking into wildfire.

 

 Autodesk mess up big time with this crap 2012 and really crappy 2013 My phone has not stopped ringing It helps me but also makes me sad.

 

One guy had some down time so they load 2013 withiout me the next day I had to go remove them all and re-install 2012. And lucky I have backups for all my clients so it only cost him 10 engineers to go home with pay 2 days of down time. and $2500.00 for me.. total cost  $7,000.00 he is not happy with autodesk right now. and wants me to look into wildfire for him as well.

Message 8 of 21
bespenship
in reply to: Neil_Cross

We are aware of this issue with the new materials library being locked by anyone accessing the library and the difficulty it causes in making updates to the library. We are actively working on changing the behavior.

 

Neil - there are a couple of things you can do to minimize the difficulty in making library updates. You may already be doing this:

 

1) With 120 or so active engineers, if you are geographically distributed across time zones, the best option may be to have two copies of your materials library. You can make updates in the offline version of the library, and turn on (or roll versions) of the updated library on a scheduled basis.

 

2) Another option is to collect changes and integrate them all when Engineers are offline, which may be difficult or impossible with the number of active engineers.

 

As noted, there were significant changes around working with materials in 2013. We've created some expanded documentation to provide more guidance on the new materials and appearances tools. Please take a look and provide feedback on the documentation usefulness.

We are listening and we are comitted to you and all of our customers in having Inventor be your mechanical design software of choice. Please continue to give us your feedback about how we can improve our products - we take your feedback seriously and it does influence or direction and decisions.

 

-Brent

Brent Espenship
Fusion 360 Quality
Macbook Pro retina - MacOS X 10.11.5 (main)
WIndows 7 Notebook
Message 9 of 21
Neil_Cross
in reply to: jletcher

$26,000 a year subscription fees? Multiply that by 20 and you're getting warm to what our subscription fees are.  Regardless, yes I had a good old moan about the materials... frankly it's dreadful, and who at Autodesk thought an industrial engineering design package needed a suite of textures including floral yellow wallpaper and mosaic bathroom tiles should be frog marched out the door immediately.  But it's still a good package, irrespective of all that garbage, the bad ill-concieved ideas, it gets a job done.  Believe me I've seen hundreds of companies and how they all use Inventor, I've seen the successful clients, and I've seen the bad side who whinge and moan about it not working and being slow/rubbish/unreliable/buggy etc.  And there's an undisputed fact that can be proven in each and every case, if a user knows their stuff, is switched on, is trained properly and has their eye on the ball, Inventor works like a dream.  If the user is negative, uninterested, lazy, ignores prompts, then it'll fall flat on its backside just like anything else would.

The talk up of Wildfire is off topic, and to move a company off Inventor to another CAD package over a few trivial issues is not only crazy but infintely more badly thought out than putting up with Inventors niggles.  Most places will have oodles of legacy data, to suddenly swap platform across to Wildfire is a massive gamble... then you have to think about training up staff, get over the learning curve, how do you work with the legacy data whilst still knocking jobs out the door, and then there's something else worth mentioning... Pro-E is full of holes and clangers.  Take a sneak peak for yourself http://www.ptc.com/community/proewf/issues.htm

 

Message 10 of 21
Neil_Cross
in reply to: bespenship

Brent - Parden my suspicious sounding response, and not that I don't appreciate the response, but you're speaking on behalf of Autodesk there but you're not signed into the forums as an Autodesk employee... and that isn't official Autodesk material you're attaching there.  Autodesk are very strict on corporate branding on documents released into the public domain, that definately isn't official...? What's the status with that.

Message 11 of 21
bespenship
in reply to: Neil_Cross

Hi Neil,

 

I'll look into fixing that - thanks for pointing it out.  On when I'm on the page, I see the Autodesk logo and "Employee", so I wasn't aware that you arent seeing the same.  I've been with Autodesk for 14 years, and my login ID predates when we made the change to having everyone create IDs the identify themselves as employees, which may be the issue.

 

I am legit - LOL - I'm in the QA group and work with Chris, Johnson, and others in our organization who respond more frequently.

 

Cheers,

-Brent-

Brent Espenship
Fusion 360 Quality
Macbook Pro retina - MacOS X 10.11.5 (main)
WIndows 7 Notebook
Message 12 of 21
Neil_Cross
in reply to: bespenship

Ah, thanks for clarifying that! Apologies for the reply, I thought you were some random one man band geezer trying pose as Autodesk to sell something! As a result I didn't read the PDF you posted, but I will.

I've recently received an invite to participate in the beta testing of SP1 for Inventor 2013... the list of fixes surrounding the materials and appearance library is staggering... and that's not a good thing! It demonstrates a very poorly tested function and to be honest, only goes to support the folk out there who hold back before upgrading to the latest release.  Off topic, but have you seen how many crashing issues are currently in the product! It's frightening.

But anyway thanks for the reply and clarifying that 🙂

 

Message 13 of 21
bespenship
in reply to: Neil_Cross

No worries - better safe than sorry. I'm glad to hear you're on the SP1 beta list.

 

We have been particularly aggressive in finding and addressing issues in SP1. I would definately like to get to a point where there are no quality considerations in the timing of moving to the next release of Inventor for any of our customers.

 

There are issues in the product, either inadvertent or by design where you (our customers) tell us that we missed the mark. Again, we are listening and responding.

Brent Espenship
Fusion 360 Quality
Macbook Pro retina - MacOS X 10.11.5 (main)
WIndows 7 Notebook
Message 14 of 21
Neil_Cross
in reply to: bespenship

Hmm, I know you have good intentions as do most of the Autodesk team... but on face value, Autodesk have had 18 releases to get it right, 18 releases to learn the lessons of the previous attempt, 18 releases to stamp out the instability we're seeing today and on a daily basis, and even this very latest release they're implementing 'new' functions that in turn break something which worked perfectly fine before.  We all know that sometimes change is a positive forward step, but I do wonder at times what the bods in HQ are thinking when I see some of the garbage that makes it into the product.

I'll be installing SP1 today and hopefully that will sort out the library issues, I have a load of users biting my **** wanting materials added into the library!

Message 15 of 21
jletcher
in reply to: Neil_Cross

Moving a company to other software is not my call that is up to the owner of the company. And what he is looking at right now if his guys have to re-learn to update he might as well look at other software. They have a few demos Inventor 2013 and they sat for a day playing. 5 engineers walked away say all kinds of bad word 3 wanted to shot the computer and 1 refused to touch it LOL..

 

But as the owner stated if Autodesk is going to make their software for manufactures into some cartoon colorful art work then they lost what manufactures need. He said the cost is out of this world and its because of all this crap we manufactures don't need. He could care less if all his parts are yellow with pink poke a dots as long as it is stable and easy. He said he only went to 3D  because he feels eveyone is going that way so he did. they still have a few engineers that refuse to use it and are still using autocad 2000. I don't need bells and whistles I need parts produced.......... Was his comment....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Message 16 of 21
richiesuk
in reply to: bespenship

what a mess and €€####.....this new material library..

 

 

Message 17 of 21
marshallw
in reply to: bespenship

Thanks SO much, Product Support! I REALLY APPRECIATE you due dilligence on this one! Here I am in Inventor PRO 2015 & ALL THE LIBRARIES ARE STILL LOCKED! Gee, for people aware of a serious problem, you sure are on the ball!

Autodesk Inventor Certified Professional
Autodesk Inventor Certified Instructor
Message 18 of 21
ChrisMitchell01
in reply to: marshallw

I'm not aware of any issues with libraries being locked incorrectly in 2015; not saying there aren't any problems, but I haven't heard...

 

Can you provide any further info ? Are you working as part of a larger team accessing the same files ?

 

Where are the libraries ? On a network drive  or UNC share or local ? Are they vaulted as part of a Design Data folder ?

 

Do you have full write access to the entire path to where the adsklib files are ?

 

If you look at the materials browser & expand out the libraries, do you see a lock icon next to the library or some other error ? Has anyone else modified the libraries recently & have they released the lock ?

 

Thanks

Chris



Chris Mitchell
PDMS Customer Engagment Team
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 19 of 21
marshallw
in reply to: ChrisMitchell01

Chris,

 

Thanks for the response. In answer to your questions:

 

A) Working solo.

 

B) Libraries in default location

 

C) System Administrator - full access to all paths.

 

D) Lock icons averywhere. Project "Use Style Library" function set to "Read/Write".

 

Still working on why material appearances won't change/update. Trying to figure out some pattern or sequence as to why before I send further info on this.

 

Thanks

 

Marshall

Autodesk Inventor Certified Professional
Autodesk Inventor Certified Instructor
Message 20 of 21
mbenoy
in reply to: marshallw

Don't know if it will help or not but I did have this happen once on 2013.  Turns out the .asdklib material library file was corrupt.  Inventor could read the current data in the file but would not save changes.  Luckily, I did a backup every time I made a change to our materials, so I went back one version and it worked fine.

Michael Benoy
Designer
Scott Safety

Inventor 2013 Pro, Windows 7, 64bit
Intel® Xeon® Processor W3580 (8M Cache, 3.33 GHz)
12 GB DDR3, NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800

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