Weird glitch

[Duke461]

You have to be very careful with editing the full robot assembly. two people should never have the same file up unless they are very experienced. on top of that, be careful with changing files. You should be fine as long as those file locations aren't put in a place not everybody can reach them, otherwise it wont load the parts and assemblies you need. So for instance, we have at our school what's called a Y drive, a student common drive, and a Max drive.
The Y drive is every students personal "folder". The student common is a drive that everyone can access, and the max drive is for robotics people only. So lets say Bob is CADding the arm assembly on his "Y" drive, and then when he's done, he transfer the assembly file to Joe's flash drive. Joe will not be able to load that file because the parts making up that assembly are located in Bob's "Y" drive. But if Bob saves everything into the student common or Max Drive, even if you only have the assembly, inventor will recognize this and try to help you locate the parts, which you could do if they were in a "student common" folder.
Hope this helps,
if this wasn't the answer you were looking for or if you have any others questions, just ask,
good luck,
-Duke
P.S. i understand what he's going through, i've CADded almost the entire robot myself this year also using Autodesk Inventor 2011; so i can answer very specific Autodesk questions as well.

[gckid333]

I understand what you are saying. I am not sure where everyone is saving their files however I don't believe that is the problem. Either way, I will relay this back to the team because that is a good practice that we should follow. Our IT students and mentors are working on creating a special server just for this kind of application.

He's done with the CAD and every part is there (he emailed me pictures). It's not that Inventor can't locate the files for each part, because apparently it has. The only problem is that at times when he loads the file again, everything gets moved around.

I'll get more info on this issue once he emails me back.

Thanks a lot everyone for all of your help!

[Duke461]

Ok. for now all i can say is check all constraints. But let me know when you get back info from him

[voltage5]

Yeah, double check the constraints. We had problems sharing robot parts in one communal folder because the individual parts only load on some computers. Inventor can get really glitchy when you're making complex designs.

[gckid333]

He says he uses constraints. He also said that he would never make it without constraints because that would be terrible practice. So it's not the constraints.

It just seems like some sortof glitch in the program. I was hoping maybe someone else had ran into this issue before but I guess not. One of our mentors just said that Autodesk must hate him

[wkalsafi]

Hi, I'm the CADder in question and I would like to thank all of you for your help.

I have some more things to ask you though:

1. so would this still occur if you copy pasted all of the iam files and its corresponding iam and ipt files and then when you opened up the iam and clicked on all of the corresponding files when it asks you for them.

2. Would this also happen if you were using a non-autodesk file (for example if you are importing an .STP file from andymark)Because whenever I place one of those in an assembly it says that Autodesk can't use this type of file but lets me place it anyway, but these files are the ones that get messed up the most.

As for a shared folder, we have tried to get one on the school network which is unsuccessful, but it is difficult to work with any of those computers as they only have either 1.5 or 2 gigabytes of ram and really terrible GPUs. So, I pretty much have been forced to work on most of them at home and transferring them (with a great deal of failure).

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by wkalsafi

Hi, I'm the CADder in question and I would like to thank all of you for your help.

I have some more things to ask you though:

1. so would this still occur if you copy pasted all of the iam files and its corresponding iam and ipt files and then when you opened up the iam and clicked on all of the corresponding files when it asks you for them.

2. Would this also happen if you were using a non-autodesk file (for example if you are importing an .STP file from andymark)Because whenever I place one of those in an assembly it says that Autodesk can't use this type of file but lets me place it anyway, but these files are the ones that get messed up the most.

As for a shared folder, we have tried to get one on the school network which is unsuccessful, but it is difficult to work with any of those computers as they only have either 1.5 or 2 gigabytes of ram and really terrible GPUs. So, I pretty much have been forced to work on most of them at home and transferring them (with a great deal of failure).

1. shouldn't be an issue
2. STP files shouldn't have a problem

What method did you use to download Inventor? CD (not chief delphi )? off the website? Also are there any files you have issues downloading that are generic like mecanum wheels or toughbox nanos? because my CAD has those and i could post the inventor files for those on here.
Good luck dude, I understand your pain w/ Inventor. But when you get it all figured out, it's one of the best programs out there. The stress tests and whatnot can prove to be very helpful

[David Guzman]

STEP files do not have constrains in them. The best thing to do with them is to save them Inventor files. When you do this, Inventor will automatically create a sub folder inside your working project and will save all the components as parts or assemblies depending on what they are. Next thing you should do is open up any assembly that was derived from a step file and either ground all the components so they can't move or constrain them properly. This should resolve your links and also prevent the assembly from "exploding".

[wkalsafi]

I actually tried installing Autodesk online but had so many issues that I ended up installing it from the CD we got from the KoP. And, I did not have any problems w/ downloading the file, but it just sometimes messes up after I place and fully constrain it and then open the assembly later.

Also, thanks for telling me about STEP files. I did not know that, and that will be helpful, but this doesn't just happen with STEP files although it happens with them often, too.

[mryeagle]

long story short your team mate needs to research inventor "projects" files

to be brief
inventor uses file associations to create the assembly file. think of it like this..
for purpose of example take this.

(graciously donated image from this thread..)http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=89768
assuming the chassis is one part. and the motors another, and the wheels a 3rd part
each of the parts needs to be save in the same folder within someones computer "directory" or drive so that the inventor project file can reference the location of the parts in the assembly .

to further simplify my suggestion is to require every part designer to save eery PART into the same folder and / or rather prior to "building" the robot in inventor to have all the parts saved (by the assembler) into the same folder



as you might have guessed we've had similar problems previously

[JD Mather]

Originally Posted by wkalsafi

...importing an .STP file ...but these files are the ones that get messed up the most.

Information on neutral format files
http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=class&session_id=3056

and learn to set up Project (ipj) file as suggested.

[Bernoulli]

from my expirience with inventor i would say the biggest problem you have is that you are relying on a flash drive with parts that may be in a sub assembly and the sub assembly file may have become curropt which may be the cause of your problem however it could also be that the files that are dissapearing are because they are not in the actual project folder. i would recomend setting up a vault at your school that comunicates with all the computers in a given room and allows everone to upload and save directly to the vault

[David Guzman]

Another helpful tip is to use the "Pack and Go" feature inside Inventor as opposed to just taking the parts in the assembly and putting them in a flash drive. This will create a folder with everything the program needs for the assembly. You can use both methods if you are careful but Pack and Go is much more relieable.

Also, I recomend making a main "Project" with various folders inside that project. As long as the folders you use are inside the main folder for the project you won't have any issues.

[inventor_phild]

Good discussion on what is effectively a file management issue. As always it seems to come down to setting up a project file correctly and then having an individual act as the CAD manager for the project.

[inventor_phild]

Originally Posted by inventor_phild

Good discussion on what is effectively a file management issue. As always it seems to come down to setting up a project file correctly and then having an individual act as the CAD manager for the project.

Here is the link to my blog with the project file overview.

http://first2011inventor.wordpress.c...nventor-files/