Rebuild warning that won't go away.

SOLIDWORKS SW General
1

I have an assembly with a sub assembly that always has the red/green traffic light on it.

Not sure if this description will get the idea across… Anyway, basic idea of the structure is this outline / tree below

Main assembly
Sub Assy1
Sub Assy2 -the one with the warning
Panel assy
Panel
Some parts
Lots of parts
Some more assemblies
Some more parts

I just went through it, and deleted every part except the sub assy1, and the tree down to the planel .prt. Trying to find the source of the warning. Left only the one panel.prt. Deleted all of the mates. And still the red/green thing stays. WTF? Used the red/green button on the top line to rebuild between deletes.

2

Just a shot in the dark here, has Sub Assy2 been saved as whatever version of SW you are using?
Are there any external references in that sub asm?
If you can post the zipped up ASM, someone may be able to take a look at it.
Things like this are tricky to troubleshoot over the interwebs. Send in a support ticket to your VAR, too.

3

Go to file>Reference, look in there.


My thinking, is that sub assy 2 has a part or something that needs Sub Assy1 to rebuild in order for it to rebuild.

So, Part asks Sub Assy 1 to rebuild, Sub Assy1 Rebuilds, Sub Assy2 rebuilds, Part asks for Sub Assy1 again to rebuild.

4

Check out this post by Rob

https://www.cadforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=169

5

Nut, my indents on my OP tree went away…

Oh well.. yes, I did talk to my support rep a while back about this. Circular reference is a term I remember from that. No easy way to find / fix.

That’s why today I went through deleting everything but the panel from the tree of sub assy’s. I didn’t save this. I guess I have to do a pack and go to fiddle with this on, I can’t loose my working models.

This error has been copied to a few different versions of the project using pack and go. I am going to start another variation today, and wanted to try to get rid of it this time… I figure once I find the source, I should be able to fix all the other versions.

My normal way of building these models - I have some parts that are common to anything, like switches, nuts, screws…
I make a front panel for the project. A box / enclosure. A circuit board.

Make an assy for the circuit board, with any parts that matter.
Make an assy for the panel, that has any press in inserts, silk screening.
Make a sub assy for the panel, with switches, PCB, etc put together as it would be for the assembly people.
Make a final assy where the panel sub assy is mated top the box, with whatever hardware, etc.

This structure lets me make drawings with BOMs for the parts associated with the steps for building each level.
Nothing more exotic than that going on.

All files are the version I’m running 2018 sp5. Just haven’t had a big enough down time to risk updating. That whole fiasco with the crappy almost monochrome icon colors [was that 2016?] really put me on the slow to update mode.

I can do a P&G of a stripped down version and upload it. Just to make it smaller, because fewer parts.

6

Here is a stripped down zip file with the error.
Final Assy CS HD V8 find error.zip

7

Most likely circular reference.

8

I don’t get that problem when I open the file in SW 2020. I believe there’s a check box somewhere in the Options that may be causing this. Alin may know where it is.

9

I’m not Alin, but do you mean this one?

10

I’m glad you’re aware that you’re not Alin…
Kidding aside, I just opened up the ASM here at home in 2019 and I get the rebuild mark. I unchecked that box and closed the asm and reopened it and I still get the rebuild mark.
I may do some digging, but that’ll depend on the time I’ve got. But, figured I’d report what I’ve found so far.

11

This is a known issue in SW 2019 and older, the presence of hidden features called CompCurve. They are generated by a bug related to adding mates to circular edges.
image.png
You have several options to fix the problem:

BTW, I am Alin. :smiley:

So… no more traffic lights:
Show Hidden Features.swp (55.4 KB)

12

Say his name and the master of SW appears!
Thanks Alin, I played with it last night and did the usual poking and prodding, but couldn’t figure it out.

Sorry for my ignorance on this matt, but is there a way that Dtief190 can mark Alin’s answer as correct? That way when someone stumbles across this in the future, they don’t have to stumble through all the noise.

13

I’m working on the “best answer” thing. So far I’ve tried a couple of things that didn’t work. I’ll let you know when I get a candidate.

14

Just one other thing to check if you keep getting rebuild when opening or rebuilding an assembly: check to see if you have any of your parts as “Read only” - if they are, this will cause this issue…

15

I thought I remember also having a problem with external references and the freeze bar…

16

Hi Alin ,

Just for grins, I ran your macro on one of my assemblies, and I got a whole bunch of these strange things:
What are those, and are they better off deleted? (or should they never ever be deleted?)

Running 2017 SP5.

Cheers
Jim

17

mbiasotti,
I’m trying to understand the reasoning here. Does this rebuild mark show if the part is read-only, but you didn’t make a change to the part? Because, to me, that’s the definition of a bug. If a file in the feature tree hasn’t changed or doesn’t have a circular reference or something, SW shouldn’t flag it, especially a perfectly fine read-only file.

Just to test it, I changed a part to read-only, opened the ASM containing that part, CTRL-Q, no mark. So, just to see what happens, I tried to change something in the part and got an error msg stating I couldn’t modify the part because it’s read-only. Here’s the weird thing, I tried again and I got the error sound, but no prompt and it let me change the material of a body in the read-only part…When I go to save, at least it lets me know the part is read-only, but apparently I can over-ride that by selecting yes here:
I’ll have to think about this functionality a little. At first I thought it’s bad, but I can see instances where this could be useful. Regardless or should I say irregardless, (thanks in part to RickB for his work in getting that word into Merriam-Webster), I was unable to get the flag to show in SW 2019 SP4.

18

I tried the macro from Alin - Downloaded. Used Tools / Macro / run. Nothing happens or changes. Tried it on the assemblies, and all the way down to the .PRT file. Maybe there is something else I have to do? I never ran a macro before.

It’s not a read only file, I have edited these designs multiple times, never got the read only complaint screen.

Would updating to SW2020 make the problem go away by loading and letting SW update to the new version on saving?

19

I just tried deleting all of the holes in the front panel.PRT… The error stays.

What does comp curves refer to? Computed curves, composite curves? I get hits for both trying to search for info online.

20

image.png
Composite curve. Joins multiple end-to-end sketches, 3D sketches, curves, edges