new intermittent bug w/ 2004

We have just run into something pretty bizarre. When opening an existing
drawing, all the section views disappear though the dims are visible as
dangling dimensions. The section cutting lines are also shown as dangling. I
have seen sections disappear before but changing the view around from show
hidden lines and back would usually regenerate the view but this is
something new.

The views generate an error that the view cannot be resolved due to a
geometric condition. It does not happen on all machines or all drawings and
not always with a given drawing all the time but it's pretty scary that you
might be losing over half of your drawings views and am not sure if they
will return the next time.

We are seeing this both with and without SP1.

Anyone else running into this ? We never had it prior to 2004.

Doug

 

Doug

Haven't struck this specific issue, but sometimes disappearing section views
can be traced to section lines in the parent view which are not rigorously
related to stable reference geometry (eg, if possible, make the section line
collinear with a plane which is present in all configurations)

Might be worth checking, although your description makes it sound unlikely
in this specific case (because multiple views are affected)

 

Thanks for the feedback Deb,

We actually found a work-around where if we just open the model first, then
the drawing, it seems to alleviate the problem as the model is then in
memory. Definitely a workaround but it keeps us from being down.

 

I have heard of the object lines going missing, but only in the eDrawings
viewer or when SW was used "view only". It had to do with the drawing
views being saved in draft quality, and the Tools, Options, Drawings, Save
tessellated data for drawings with shaded and draft quality views setting,
and was supposedly fixed in SP1.

Do you still see the problems if you use that switch or if you save
drawings with high quality views on SP1?

As for that error message, you might try a couple of things. First, in the
section view properties, set "Scale with model". This will make the
section line get bigger if the overall model size increases. The other
thing I would try is to try to make the cut in the model and see if you get
a similar error, or if it makes the type of zero-thickness geometry that
sometimes causes things to react unpredictably.

Without any data to look at, those are the places I would recommend
starting to look for the cause of the problem.

matt

 

It's been doing this for years (at least SW2001), but could never be
bothered to report it to my VAR... (lazy). It's a real pain if you're in
the habit of viewing dwgs in Swx rather than Swx viewer or Edwgs.

Seems to me to be more of an issue with RapiDraft (sp?) dwgs, although I
also notice this when the dwg (sectioned or otherwise) is referenced to an
assembly that insists on saving changes everytime it's opened and closed,
even if done immediately, and when nothing has been done to any of the
refenced parts in the interim (stand alone machine, no one has access to my
files...)

I've always assumed that this is due to some nasty circular reference that
I've modeled in somewhere, but have never managed to prove it...

Chris