New constraint violates "old" ones but there are none

[Anonymous]

I have a strange problem with a bunch of sheet metal and shrinkwrap parts in an assembly. The shrinkwraps parts were originally step files I imported from Altium designer. The problem I face is the following:

I change stuff on the PCBs, export them again as step files, import them in Inventor into an assembly and generate a new shrinkwrap part (otherwise the files are quite large and Inventor starts lagging, I guess there is too many details on the PCBs). Now when I want to update my assembly which contains PCBs and other mechanical parts Inventor complains that the shrinkwrap parts are not the same anymore and most probably all the relationships will fail. When I update the assembly, indeed most of the relationships fail (which is not really a surprise). I then delete the old constraints on the PCB parts (such that the don't have any constraint anymore, i.e. they are completely free now. I then want to set new constraints again to position the PCBs. Clicking on the respective parts moves them over the screen as the constraint preview should do. However, when I click "apply", Inventor complains that the assembly cannot be resolved. Clicking on diagnose the relationship reveals that the respective constraint conflicts with itself (see attached screenshot), clicking on "cancel" closes the window but the new constraint is now set.

Is there a reason for this? How can I get rid of this? Unfortunately I cannot publish the files.

Last: Everytime I make changes at the PCBs I have to go over all this again: importing the step file, generating shrinkwrap, redoing all the constraints. Is there more efficient way to accomplish this? Every change in the PCBs generates quite some work to reset all those things.

[JDMather]

Can you zip and Attach your assembly here?

Does Manage >Rebuild All return any errors?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! It is hard to tell where the exact problem is without seeing the actual files. Based on your description, I suspect this is a constraint error corruption issue. Somehow a deleted sick constraint is still kept in the file. Like JD said, please share the files here so forum experts can take a look.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

As I said I'm not allowed to publish the respective files, they contain too much confidential information. Since this happened twice now, and simply restarting the program helped in one case, I'm also not too sure whether I'm doing it wrong or whether this is a bug.

Any suggestion on how to improve my updating process regarding the import of the PCB step files? The importing feature in Inventor is something I really don't like. When I changed the PCBs I renew the respective step file of the PCB. I then want to import the step into an assembly to generate a shrinkwarp part.  However, Inventor keeps using the old ipt file generated from the old version of the step. Consequently I delete this ipt file to try to force Inventor to reimport the step data. Answer after I deleted the old ipt and wanted to reimport step: "This file refers to another file with the same name which is already opened in Inventor....." (it refers to the old ipt file generated from the step which I just deleted. Only solution I found so far: restart program.

How can I FORCE Inventor to reimport the data from a step file I already imported without having to restart the program everytime? And without Inventor trying to use the old data which I explicitly don't want anymore?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! If I understood your workflows correctly, here is what you did.

1) Import a STEP file via Convert workflow. You get an Inventor assembly with a bunch of components. Each component is a separate file.

2) When you try importing a new version of the STEP file, Inventor does not import it completely because of existing imported files.

This behavior was enabled to support associative import workflows (Reference). If you want to overwrite the existing imported files on disc, you can close the assembly and import the STEP file again and save. It will overwrite the existing files on disc.

Or, you may consider leveraging associative import workflows (Reference). The Inventor file will be linked to STEP file. You can overwrite the STEP file later. Then the Inventor file will be updated.

Does it capture what you are doing correctly?

Many thanks!