If you
deal with large drawings, multiple sheets, multiple views, you must have seen
this one. For every view you place Inventor assigns a name “A” “B” etc. But if
you start moving views around, or if for any reason you delete some of them, like
doing temporary sections to check for interferences, the view name increments from the last used
character. So by the time I finish the drawing I have un-sequenced drawing view
names like:“A”, “F” “M”. I finally got
tired of explaining this in the workshop every time so I’ve stripped bits of
code together in order to fix this.
Here’s
the code, add your own approved letters for the drawing views.
'------------------START CODE---------------
' Set a reference to the drawing document.
' This assumes a drawing document is active.
DimoDrawDocAsDrawingDocument
oDrawDoc=ThisApplication.ActiveDocument
DimoSheetsAsSheets
DimoSheetAsSheet
DimoViewsAsDrawingViews
DimoViewAsDrawingView
'set your view labels here
MyText="ABCDEFHJKLMNP"
'You could have single digits numbers
'MyText = "123456789"
'have it reverse
'MyText = "z9y8x7v6u5"
'multiple characters, labels or strings
'MyText = New
String(){"1","2","10","ADS","FIRST","SECOND","YOUR
NAME","ETC."}
Just
had a couple of more crashes and corrupted T&P assemblies and I’ve decided
to share the pain, or is it the fun that I am sharing, don’t really know
anymore. I seem to confuse them all the time.
As
mentioned before, if you are working with T&P environment and you seem
to be getting weird results it might be because of a corrupted T&P
assembly. Some of the symptoms are:
-Importing styles reports
success but not styles are present (or have been imported).
-Styles have gone missing in
styles editor (none present).
-Changing styles will not update
routes.
-Style not persistent in all
runs/routes (looks different, gap, size, appearance, etc.)
-Cannot place fittings, onto
routes or freely.
-Any other anomalies or
behaviours different than usual T&P work process.
The typical folder
structure for T&P is:
1.MAIN ASM
1.1T&P ASM
1.1.1Run1
1.1.1.1Route 1
1.1.1.2Route2
1.1.1.3ETC.
1.1.2Run 2
1.1.3ETC.
You’ve got a couple of choices here and you can:
-Use a previous version in
OldVersions or in Vault history. Not really an option for those that don’t use
vault and the problem might be older than the backups in OldVersions.
So now what? In
short you need to create a copy of the T&P assembly, or just the runs, or just the
routes, depending on where the problem is.
STEP 1:
No matter what you do the first step is to create a new context for the T&P
ASM.
Option 1:
Create
a copy of Main ASM under a different name and that’s because we might still
need the original one to save/update original files (will get back to it in a
second).
Option2:
Create
a new asm , place Main ASM in it and promote all components except T&P
assembly. This is to maintain constraints and relations between components.
These options are necessary, and
they will create new files for the new T&P asm, as well as all the runs and
routes. I would use option 1 because with promote/demote you lose constraints of the main asm, as well as any modifications in the asm, like parameters or
representations (view, position, lod)
STEP2:
Recreate the T&P asm in the
new context
Option 1:
- Use pace component and place
the original T&P assembly here.
- Right click on it and select
“Make Adaptive”. This will create new files (copy) adaptive and activated as
T&P type editable files. Make sure you have “Make all runs adaptive”
ticked.
You will lose all references and
included geometry for your routes but at least you will have all files created
as new in the closest possible configuration to the original one. It’s just a
matter of re-constraining the routes, and re-projecting your references with
“include geometry”. If the T&P was corrupted sometimes in the copy process
it takes the errors with it as well so check next step.
Option 2:
If you still have problems with T&P
then you need to repeat Step 1 and instead of placing the original T&P:
- Create a new T&P from the
Environment/Begin/Tube and Pipe.
- Save main asm (top level)
- Not necessary but I do go back
inside T&P and delete Run1 (automatically created)
- Use place component and place
the original runs. They are asm files as well and they look like this: 150122-05.Run01.iam
- Save main asm (top level)
- Back to T&P and right
click “Make Adaptive”
- Repeat for all Runs.
Option3:
If
you have problems with one of the runs, then:
-Recreate
Step1:
-
Start a new T&P environment.
-
In the newly created route use place component and add all the fittings and
routes in the original run.
-
Do this for all runs.
-
Save the main asm (top level)
-
Make them adaptive.
This
is the longest and most frustrating, repetitive, time-consuming option but it’s
here just in case some runs go bad.
Things to consider
if you experience corrupted files lot of times:
-Keep the T&P template in
Design Data folder clean. Don’t add any styles to it, don’t edit it, this will
help you when migrating to newer versions of Inventor. Have the styles exported
as xml and import them when needed in your current project. Don’t import them
all, just the one you are going to use
-Make sure you have all
libraries attached to your project.
-Keep styles consistent with
Content Center (no missing libraries, corrupted family tables, proper authored
pars, etc.)
-Don’t have long folder paths.
T&P as well as Design Accelerator and FEA tend to create long file paths,
so keep your projects as close as possible to root drive so you don’t overpass
the MS Windows limit of 256 characters.
I want to share
a couple of excel tricks for retrieving data from other spreadsheets with
vlookup match and error handling like when reporting #NA. We have a single
excel database that contains all our part numbers, prices, description, vendor
and some more info. What I wanted was to link each member in our ipart table
(eventually a CC item) to our price parts list and ask excel to find our part
number, place it in stock number and find the price and place it in cost
center.
For simplicity I
have copied the price list spreadsheet to a local path next o our library
folder where we have all the components we author. This way I can work on it at
home and in places where the mapped network drive is not accessible. I copy the
new price list each year when it changes. I only used the price in the cost
center of each item to provide a default value instead of leaving it blank.
What we intend
to do is export the BOM and use the same vlookup formula to find the latest
prices before doing a quote. The price
we put in CC is so we can have a value / any value, rather than leaving it
blank bu we intend to update the BOM export with the vlookup formula at every
export.
The tricky part
was finding cells based on partial data. I have the manufacturer code, Georg
Fisher part number, but in our price parts list we don’t have a cell with just
GF Part number instead it holds something like this: “GF REF: 729101108” or “GF
REF: 729101107 DRAIN CENTRE REF. P31127”.
So all I have is 729101108 and I need to use a formula that can find a match
inside a larger text and return the part number and price.
Can’t use left,
right, mid, and len functions because Part Number appears randomly depending on
who entered this info.
The solution is
to use MATCH to find part of a text like *729101108* (* used as wildcard) and
INDEX to get our Part Number value.
Once I found our
part number for that item I can simply use VLOOKUP to get the price since the
part number is a single unique cell value.
Here is the
formula to get our Part Number (we store it in the parts Stock Number
ipropertie).
MATCH(("*"&U5&"*")
will actually try and find the value in cell U5 (our number 729101108 with
anything before or after it in any part of the text of column E in our price
list. Here is the microsoft help page.
If there is no
part number (stock number) in cell M then don’t put anything but if there is a
part number then add £ in front and then the value of column 3 in our price
list.
I have attached
my Georg Fischer iPart excel template for your review. I am sure it’s better to
see all this at work rather than trying to understand my explanation.
Vault
has not been part of my CAD up until 18 months ago and everywhere I’ve been a
project file for each job has been in place. Now we only use on project for
entire CAD area and while I like that I don’t need to play with changing and
managing projects I do miss a couple of things. It seems all I do is browser for files and it takes longer now to do
nested projects so that I can create local editable CC items. I know there is
global setting for placing CC as custom but I am taking about that special
times when we need to generate all the tube and pipe elements locally which
otherwise would go straight to default CC folder without a local generation
option.
Having
one vault project will not take you to your work in progress (just latest used location),
like if you had a project for each job. I can’t edit the vaulted ipj file without
affecting the rest of my colleagues so the only reasonable thing to do was to
create shortcuts for the most common and current projects I work on. Nothing
fancy here, just good old windows shortcuts to save me from navigating folders
all day.
So when
I open or place something I click on Workspace (if I am not already there) in
the left side window and then on to my shortcuts for a speedy navigation.
The fastest way for creating
shortcuts is to drag with your left mouse button while holding ALT pressed the
destination folder into your Workspace.
I would
only recommend you to be careful when deleting shortcuts, make sure it’s just
them you’re deleting.
Where has the time gone? I've missed 2 posts for the last weeks but I was in no way able to get close to a computer to hit publish.
Christmas week came loud and clear and Monday on the 22'nd of December right after midnight I was rushing at the hospital with my wife because my son decided to come to life. He was borne in the afternoon at 18:00 and the rest of the week we spend in hospital doing all sorts of tests and checks as they do on a new one.
Second week we came home but still had the 1 in 3 hours sleep routine (sometimes even less) so very little was done. We are slowly getting back to normal; I have returned to work as well so time is scarce but I will get back with those posts.
Thank you all for the kind words, mum and baby are doing fine, and I just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for the one ahead.
