"edited but not saved" for flexible assemblies/layout assemblies

[berg_lauritz]

As soon as I make an assembly flexible & mate it within another assembly to be fully constrained I ALWAYS do get the "File edited but not saved" warning on it.

There is no way around it, is there?
I.e. we have adjustable rods that are adjustable from 18" to 30" and I don't want to have configurations for every .5mm.
We also have hinges on doors that are different for each door depending on the available angles.
But this is of course slowing down our assemblies because every time it has to be rebuilt based upon this.

How do you circumvent this problem?
Maybe put the same part (i.e. for hinges) twice in there & change the qty to be .500? That way we can place each piece individually & constrain it fully & BOM would still show only a QTY of 1. That would impair our BOM selection though, wouldn't it (Display all configurations of the same part as one item)?


Also we noticed that i.e. our drawers which have a layout sketch in them to determine their overall length/width/height have a similar problem:
Although we defined a layout sketch the assembly will still update in the 'second round' of solving this assembly - why?
Any ideas?
Wasn't the layout sketch designed to prevent things like that - isn't the layout sketch the first 'feature' after the origin in an assembly?
What do I have to do to prevent this circular referencing?

[berg_lauritz]

Made a very disturbing discovery today that is partially the culprit:

McMaster Carr fastener models use equations for almost everything - but often they have warnings in them because they are i.e. circular.
Especially old items (we have a few of them) or modified items from them (we have some of them) have this problem.

Look at this:

I knew this would come back at one point like a boomerang and here we are.

Especially painful about this:
https://r1132100503382-eu1-3dswym.3dexp ... BIgASIdKIw

This 'modified on open pencil' only shows in the assembly structure and not within the actual part. And this does not always happen either - nothing was showing for me until one rebuild suddenly showed a pencil again. Only after going into that assembly & doing a performance evaluation it showed the fastener - within the fastener I had to pro-actively go into the equations to finally get an idea.
I'll try to fix it next week - otherwise we might have to replace basically all of our fasteners with new ones.

[jcapriotti]

Are your fasteners using configurations? If not, I'd remove the equations.

The problem is that they created an equation to a cosmetic thread which are strange creatures in SolidWorks. I'm not quite certain when they rebuild, they show under the feature they are attached to but they aren't really there at that position in the tree. I suspect they rebuild at the end after everything else, thus the pattern equation is circular by referencing it.

[JSculley]

Are your fasteners using configurations? If not, I'd remove the equations.

The McMaster parts never have configs. I always delete the equations.

The other reason why flexible assemblies cause problem is that when you make it flexible a new secret configuration is created for the assembly. You can only see this configuration if you open the flexible child assembly while you also have the parent assembly open. The configuration drop down menu in the flexible assembly will then show the secret configurations, one for each flexible instance. These added configurations may be triggering the 'edited but not saved' flag.

[berg_lauritz]

The McMaster parts never have configs. I always delete the equations.

The other reason why flexible assemblies cause problem is that when you make it flexible a new secret configuration is created for the assembly. You can only see this configuration if you open the flexible child assembly while you also have the parent assembly open. The configuration drop down menu in the flexible assembly will then show the secret configurations, one for each flexible instance. These added configurations may be triggering the 'edited but not saved' flag.

That is.... rather unfortunate.
So any idea how to circumvent this problem for i.e. the adjustable rod?

[AlexLachance]

Hey Berg,

Is your flexible assembly mated to it's environment (planes, origin) or is there one fixed part and the rest are attached to them?

[SPerman]

Every time I've tried to use flexible assemblies it results in nothing but headaches.

When I use pneumatic cylinders or the like, I make configurations for each critical length used in my assembly. IMO, that is less work than always fighting with flexible assemblies.

[AlexLachance]

Every time I've tried to use flexible assemblies it results in nothing but headaches.

When I use pneumatic cylinders or the like, I make configurations for each critical length used in my assembly. IMO, that is less work than always fighting with flexible assemblies.

It's understanding how the principle works that's hard because it's really not as evident as it seems to be. The environment plays an important part for flexible assemblies. If you are not mated to the environment, your flexible sub-assemblies always kind of "rebuild" themselves.

[SPerman]

My problem was the flexible assemblies ALWAYS had a yellow triangle. I would open the subassembly, and there was nothing wrong. The only way I found to get this to go away was to set the assembly to non-flexible, and then change it back to flexible. That worked until the next time the assembly was opened, at which point it started all over again.

I'm not saying it wasn't my fault, or that there aren't workflows to eliminate this behavior, but for me, there were easier solutions.

[JSculley]

I would open the subassembly, and there was nothing wrong.

Except, you weren't opening it to the secret flexible configuration. If you open the parent assembly, open the flexible assembly and then switch to the 'flexible-xxxx' config, the rebuild errors may be there. It's all the usual configuration stuff (mates from other configs that should be suppressed, components that are fixed in one config and not others, etc).

[SPerman]

Except, you weren't opening it to the secret flexible configuration. If you open the parent assembly, open the flexible assembly and then switch to the 'flexible-xxxx' config, the rebuild errors may be there. It's all the usual configuration stuff (mates from other configs that should be suppressed, components that are fixed in one config and not others, etc).

I suspect you are correct. And it might have been easily fixable if I knew about the secret configs. (I have seen them, but didn't really give them any consideration.)

[berg_lauritz]

Eliminating flexible assemblies, updating cosmetic threads & deleting useless equations seemed to somewhat fix my problem. Almost.

So here a follow up question:
If you have virtual parts in an assembly for i.e. a purchased part - will that also always show me an 'edited but not saved' warning because those parts are saved in that assembly?

In my example it's a door hinge..

• So my assembly (aka the whole part that you buy) is the door hinge that consists out of virtual parts.
• This assembly has two configurations (closed/open) which both have a display data mark
• I upgraded the screws & holes from the hole wizard to have the 'new' cosmetic threads
• I deleted ALL equations from the parts
• I deleted ALL custom properties from those files (just to be sure)

But I still do get an edited but not saved mark there. I saw this happening on other assemblies with virtual parts happening too sometimes. Did I solve the case & this is the last culprit?

Thank you for all the input already. It helped me discover new things.

Edit:

Hey Berg,

Is your flexible assembly mated to it's environment (planes, origin) or is there one fixed part and the rest are attached to them?

It was fixed & the rest was attached to it.

[berg_lauritz]

So, here are combined the findings:

1. A flexible assembly is saved in the exact display state it is currently in. Any movement of this will show the 'edited but not saved' in PDM because the 3D data that is shown is modified. This rules out flexible assemblies for us because you will never know if something is just modified because it's flexible.
2. Having no display data marks causes this issue.
3. Not upgraded legacy cosmetic threads (pre-2019) can cause the edited but not saved issue.
4. Virtual assemblies with virtual parts cause the edited but not saved issue. We used it a lot for purchased parts and it seems SolidWorks hast to load the virtual parts in the virtual assembly every time (or at least do some calculations). Maybe empty virtual parts do not cause this issue, I'm unsure.
5. Sheet metal parts create a flat pattern basically every time you make a drawing. A display data mark is NOT added automatically ALL configurations. The first one will be omitted (even if it is checked in the settings). This can cause the edited but not saved issue. Bonus: If you use the sheet metal feature it WILL activate the 'automatically create cut lists/update cut lists automatically' checkmarks. They have to be deactivated AFTER using the sheet metal feature.
6. Equations can also cause this issue (circular links, broken equations, equations linked to external file). Not regularly though - it seems that only the parts with those equations that are the highest in the assembly structure will cause issues (Part A in Assembly A causes it - but part B in Subassembly B in Assembly A does not cause issues). Equations are also tricky because they are (it seems) not ALWAYS calculated. Sometimes you have to use the feature/open the equations dialog to get the warning.
7. Assembly features are a mystery to me. They can cause this issue too. Mostly because it seems that all assembly features are calculated at point blank (all parts unmodified in their 'mated' place) - meaning that anything that is i.e. mated to an assembly feature (cut face) or is linked to any assembly feature might fail. This includes patterns.
8. Here comes my least favourite issue because it is sometimes impossible to correct and REALLY hard to set up properly: External referenced parts
   • If you have parts that have external references they will always have to be checked out & saved again if you modify the externally linked parts/assemblies. REGARDLESS if this change affects the piece or not.
   • Parts with external references should be fixed in space & should (if possible) have nothing mated to them nor anything else.
   • You also have to carefully order the update holders for those externally linked pieces:

     

     2022-06-08 13_13_38-.png (18.79 KiB) Viewed 2166 times

     

     2022-06-08 13_09_00-Window.png (17.25 KiB) Viewed 2166 times

   • BUT that does not always solve the issue, because the ORDER of how you INSERTED the parts is crucial and CAN NOT BE CHANGED AFTERWARDS
     This looks good at first sometimes as soon as you open the mate folder it will show you a red, failed update holder. I could only solve this by deleting the part & inserting it again (put it at the end of the queue). I think that in the old forum @Roasted By John talked about this & insisted that the FIRST PART YOU INSERT for a top down design should be the one that drives your references. This is why.