5 Replies Latest reply on Apr 25, 2014 1:37 PM by Glenn Schroeder

Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord

Daniel Mapp Apr 25, 2014 5:32 AM

Have just come across a particularly strange problem with a small assembly in one of our larger design files.

When opening the top level assembly I noticed that a small bracket and card guide assembly was not displaying despite all parts being set to visible.

In the feature tree for the assembly I expanded the sub assembly in question to find that it no longer contained any parts:

Moving on from this I navigated to the assembly within windows explorer and opened the file.

The assembly displays in Solidworks for a nano second then all parts vanish and the feature tree is empty:

Is there any technical explanation for how this has happened and how/if it can be resolved?

--I'm ruling out the files being deleted as the assembly was last saved over a year ago and am assuming that if the files had been deleted they wouldn't briefly display when opening the file.--

Re: Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord

Adrian Williams Apr 25, 2014 6:53 AM (in response to Daniel Mapp)

Hi Daniel,
The only time I've ever come across this is when I have, in error, deleted the parts in a sub assembly when looking at a larger one.
The image will show briefly because a screenshot is saved in the assembly file.
The only thing you can do now is to put the parts back into the assembly.
Adrian.
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Re: Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord

Jeff Holliday Apr 25, 2014 11:51 AM (in response to Daniel Mapp)

Check to be sure there is has been no configuration created in the assy that does not include the parts. This will not take long to check but stranger things have happened at times!
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- Re: Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord
  
  Glenn Schroeder Apr 25, 2014 11:53 AM (in response to Jeff Holliday)
  
  Jeff Holliday wrote:
  
  Check to be sure there is has been no configuration created in the assy that does not include the parts. This will not take long to check but stranger things have happened at times!
  
  Jeff,
  
  Wouldn't the parts still show in the tree, but be grayed out, if that was the case?
  
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Re: Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord

Andy Sanders Apr 25, 2014 12:21 PM (in response to Daniel Mapp)

If this particular assembly was being used as a sub-assembly and a user deleted all the parts from the sub assembly as it sat inside the main assemlby and saved it, they will be gone.

This is a change from past releases where deleting a part in a sub-assembly will delete the whole assembly, not just the parts inside.

This is a particularly EVIL setup that has burned me many times. I've actually deleted parts in this very way and surprised myself later.

I really wish SW would give a pop up window asking if you really mean to delete the subs parts or the whole sub before it zaps them.

I don't know if this is what happend to you, but it's happened to me.
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- Re: Parts disappearing from assembly on their own accord
  
  Glenn Schroeder Apr 25, 2014 1:37 PM (in response to Andy Sanders)
  
  Andy Sanders wrote:
  
  If this particular assembly was being used as a sub-assembly and a user deleted all the parts from the sub assembly as it sat inside the main assemlby and saved it, they will be gone.
  
  That's one possibility, and probably the most likely. Adrian also referred to it above.
  
  https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/63841?start=0&tstart=0
  
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