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Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies
3

Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

(OP)
Hi, this is my first post in these forums, and I come to you with a very strange Solidworks issue. I have multiple assemblies that are composed of parts and assemblies that are accessed and edited from several computers over an office network, but are stored on one of these computers and not a central server based storage medium. Over the past few days we have noticed that seemingly random parts will disappear from seemingly random assemblies. The strange thing is that the part still retains all of its references, for example a tube serving as a manifold will still have all the fittings and various connections associated with and mated to it in their correct positions. Additionally when the part is opened it show a complete and intact record of all of its features and associated sketches. These can all be changed without error, but the part remains in its same ghost state. The part looks as though nothing is there, ie there are no lines to show edges which would indicate a transparency was imparted to it somehow, it looks simply like you just started a new file. Also you may want to look at a certain part of an assembly, subsequently open it, have it appear just fine, then close the part only to have it disappear from the assembly, and not reappear when you open it. I have attached an example part file, both to try and show what I am speaking about, but also to garner some information on whether or not other people have the same issue with this file, or it is limited to us. All help is much appreciated.  

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

I have had this issue a couple of times, and this is on a single seat with no network involved. The file had become corrupted and had to be fixed by my VAR or SolidWorks.

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

The few times that I have had a similar problem it turned out that there was a solid body (in the Solid Bodies folder) that was hidden, right clicking on it and choosing show fixed it.  

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

I encountered this problem working on something with a designer that had no clue about configurations or surpressing parts. Just deleted stuff that 'didn't belong there'.

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

Quote (OP):

Over the past few days we have noticed that seemingly random parts will disappear from seemingly random assemblies.
When you say disappear do you mean from the graphical display or from the feature tree?

Can you save the part in 2009 or a neutral format so everyone can view it? Not everyone works the forums from a machine with SW loaded.  

TOP
CSWP, BSSE
www.engtran.com  www.niswug.org
www.linkedin.com/in/engineeringtransport

"Node news is good news."

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

TC  My problems with all of the "graphic" representation of the parts not loading, were a few years ago at a different job, They had a problem of not enough system memory, We added more memory to the machine and all showed up as it was supposed to.You are getting "stuff" from a different machine, ect.... Needs memory to be moved from there to here. Try all parts ect. on your machine, to see if this is a problem.

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

Quote (DanStro):

The few times that I have had a similar problem it turned out that there was a solid body (in the Solid Bodies folder) that was hidden, right clicking on it and choosing show fixed it.

That is exactly what I see in the part attached in the original post.  

Joe
SW Premium 2011 SP3.0
Dell T3500 Xeon W3505 2.4Ghz
6.0GB  Win7 Pro x64
ATI FirePro V5800

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

(OP)
Well the hidden solid bodies issue does seem to fix the problem. Thank you everyone for your help. As for the other possible issues listed, the problem was apparent on any machine in any condition, such as if the actual assembly was copied to another machine, and then opened it would still appear in this matter. In any event, I thank everyone for their input, and I am very glad that we have a way to solve this issue. As a side note, anyone have any idea what could cause the body to become hidden in the first place, these parts were not ones that would commonly be hidden in order to view things, and as I said before we couldn't determine any set of rules or characteristics that would lead us to determine a cause for the parts disappearance.  

RE: Parts mysteriously disappearing from assemblies

The Hide/Show Tree items settings in Options determines whether or not you see the SolidBodies or surface bodies folder in tree. If you Right Click in the Tree with nothing selected you can jump right to the options settings for Feature Manager.

Setting      Result
Automatic    Solid Bodies Folder is shown if there is more than 1 solid body, Surface Bodies Folder if any surface features exist.
Hide           Always hides SolidBodies Folder (You can access it using the method shown in CBL's picture
Show          Always shows folder even when there is only 1 solid body

When SolidBodies Folder is shown the Show/Hide status of any item can be toggled just by clicking the icon in first column of the Display Plane (to the right of the feature manager) for SolidWorks 2010 and up.

If Solid Bodies are named from Solid Body folder the solid will keep that name otherwise the name is determined by the name of the last created feature of the body.

Michael
CSWP, CSWI, CSWST

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