Here's the scenario. You want to edit a component (part or assembly), but only temporarily. You may want to see how the mass changes, or take a screenshot of a different design concept. In any case, you make sure the part isn't checked out. Once you're done, you close the component and make sure to NOT save the changes. Now the fun begins.
Unfortunately, you had an an assembly open that was using that component. So now, even though you didn't save the component as you closed it, those changes are reflected in the assembly. It doesn't matter if you refresh the component file from the Vault, and re-open it. That component will be stuck with the changes until you can close the assembly that contains it.
So then it gets even worse. You have made other changes to the assembly that you want to keep, so you can't just close everything without saving. You have to save the assembly, then close it, then reopen it in order to see the component as it was before the temporary changes. But now there's even more problems. When you save the assembly, Inventor prompts you to save the component as well:
Checked-in files should NEVER be write-enabled on principle, but that's a separate problem. So now, you click "No" in the save column for the component, since you only want to change the assembly. But, inexplicably, that changes the field in the save column for the assembly to "No" and it says that the file is not checked out from Vault! The file is most certainly checked out from Vault.
At this point, your only real hope is to hit "Yes" to saving both, then close everything and THEN refresh the component file from the Vault before opening anything. Yeah, it's a mess.
The only real way I know to prevent this is to make sure all assemblies are closed before attempting to temporarily modify a file. But this is something you have to remember to do.
Is there a better way?
