Attempt to save bad pointer. Save aborted

[thndrcat]

thread561-126540

We have been getting this too. I saw that the original post about this was in 2005.. 7 years later and this is still happening?
I try to save a part and get this error. I get the same error when trying to save the assembly that this part belongs to (the error comes up on 3 parts in the assembly).
Any ideas? I deleted the 3 offending parts out of the assembly and the error still comes up. I did this to the "new" assembly after doing a file, save as.
TIA.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Have you contacted GTAC and have them look at your files? If not, please do so as they may be able to help you get past whatever the issue is.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[thndrcat]

I can't personally do this but may be able to mention it to someone who might be able to though the files are proprietary/strictly secure and can't be shared. In the past, we've been told that the "fix" is to recreate each model from scratch. That is no longer acceptable. I just don't want this to keep happening and want to know what's causing it to avoid future problems.

 

[JohnRBaker]

NOT working with GTAC will not help you avoid future problems. We are set up to protect the security and integrity of your data.

BTW, what version of the software are you running? Do you have the latest Maintenance Release installed?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Toost]

As John says, the people that most probably can help you analyse situations like this, are GTAC.
A bad pointer is a very vague error message that "something has happened in one of the parts that shouldn't have happened."
Probably as vague as " there's something wrong with the motor in my car", I.e at this stage nobody knows what is wrong.
The thing that you can do is run Part cleanup, It will try synchronize the data structures in the parts. But do it before the error message, when the error has occurred, it might be too late . Then save.

Regards
Tomas

 

[thndrcat]

Ok, understood. I will bring it up to those who can do something about it. How does one run a Part cleanup? We are using 7.5. I don't know what maintenance release we have.
Thanks for your help!

 

[JohnRBaker]

To run 'Part Cleanup' on currently opened parts, go to...

File -> Utilities -> Part Cleanup...

...where you will have the option of setting many 'tasks' on either the current Work Part, an open Assenbly and its Components or ALL parts in your session.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[aduda]

Part clean up can help solve most of these issues. I have noticed this issue, worked with GTAC and seems we could not come up with anything specific except that there was a specific part in the assembly that was corrupted. We could not tell what corrupted the part....
Loading the part by itself then doing part clean up and saving it solved the issue in many cases.
Most users who were having this issue were using 4 Tier and sometimes had more than one session running on the server. I am not saying this is the cause...just a thought.
Investigate with GTAC and you will hopefully get a solution.

 

[thndrcat]

Part cleanup didn't help. Can't send files to GTAC because of ITAR. I think I've narrowed the problem down to certain types of PMI (regular, not lightweight) section views. I did a file-save as on the original. I then deleted the PMI views one at a time and did a file save as on them each time until the bad pointer error disappeared and I had a successful save. Ok, it doesn't like that section view for some reason. So I opened the original again, did another file save as. I opened that PMI section view and deleted all the PMI dimensions on it. Tried saving and it failed again. All that was left was the section. I deleted that and the save was again successful. The section was created by drawing a rectangular sketch (that "enclosed" the whole part) on a plane that ran right down the center of the part. I "started" at 0 and extruded back (-XX inches) far enough to slice the part in half. Pretty straightforward.
I need the regular section views so I can inherit the PMI dimensions onto a 2D drafting sheet. Lightweight sections don't ever appear in the base view list (in drafting) though regular created PMI sections do.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I think that we need make clear to everyone that the Siemens PLM GTAC organization is fully compliant with respect to the procedures and regulations covering the handling of ITAR data. If you have any concerns please contact GTAC and you will be able to review the procedures which we use and how we handle data like this as part of our world class support for our customers which includes the protection of not only ITAR data but any information provided to us by our customers and partners.

For a review of how the Siemens PLM Software GTAC organization supports our customers and what the various options and services are, including protection of customer data (please see the material on page 8), I've provide a link to a document covering these issues:

http://support.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/services/GTAC_Support_Services_Guide.pdf

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[crecore]

We have been fighting this problem for a couple of years. Several files sent to GTAC could not be opened at all (bad pointer upon load). In this case part clean up is not available. Other files mysteriously "fixed" themselves later on making us wonder if it was a network latency problem or something. On other assemblies, while the model wouldnt open, the master model drawing would open until a view with the problem or view with the component with a problem tried to load. If you are patient you can, by matter of elimination, you can narrow down the problem to a given number of components or sub assemblies. Loading those one at a time first sometimes helps. Otherwise, we have had some luck running part clean up on the components or sub assemblies, then going back to the main assembly. Knock on wood, this has not happened to any of my personal assemblies but I have tried to help others to figure out what they may be doing wrong.

My biggest suspicion is that there is a broken link caused by the fact that the save as function and cloning dont seem to fully support (or update file names) for linked geometry! Perhaps there is improvements here in TC versus Native but based on our TC test scenarios I doubt it.

NX 8.0.1.5

 

[looslib]

John,

There are certain organizations that just cannot send files out. ITAR has nothing to do with it when you are in a secure environment, computer network is NOT on the internet and security clearances are required to look at the files.

In my situation, I cannot even send a core text configuration file that contains no proprietary information for the PDM system out. My procedure if they MUST have a text file is multi-step.

1) Print file from secure system
2) Have file reviewed for to be sure there is no classified information
3) Scan file to my unclassified computer as a PDF
4) OCR the file in Acrobat to convert it back to text
5) compare original printed file to converted file for OCR errors and formatting (OCR likes to make 'so' out of '50')
6) File is now ready to email to support person

Obviously this does not work with CAD files where I have to try to build a model on my unclassified system that shows the same problem.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[thndrcat]

John-

Yeah, I think I'm in the same situation as Ben with security clearances and all that. I am not being critical of GTAC or support at all, just trying to get this all done by our deadline.
I have a work-around for now. Lightweight sections don't get this error. I can use those for PMI views, even though I can't section them as I'd like. For 2D drafting views, I can just create the section that I need (to show the internal features that I need to show) in Drafting.
I think it is something to do with the internal features that are being "sliced" through in these failing PMI sections. Our support people suggested that the software, for some reason, doesn't like sectioning of things that are created with a revolve. Something about circular loops and messing with dependencies. It was all a little over my head, I'm afraid.
The curious thing is, I worked with this particular part and did many saves last week. My first save yesterday and I got the bad pointer error?! Not sure why it would save it sometimes with out a problem and not others. Pesky issue.
Thanks, everyone for your help.
-J

 

[thndrcat]

The saga continues. Now, instead of getting the bad pointer error when trying to save an assembly, I get
(on a different assembly) an "invalid tag" error when trying to open up an assembly. I load the files from TC to NX then try to open the assembly but no go. This particular assembly involves a huge background view (installation view). I had created a PMI view of part of the assembly. I put some notes on this view. I then repositioned some of the notes and saved it all (save work part only). Next time I went to open up the assembly with the background view, no go. After several hours/days of troubleshooting this, I decided to delete the PMI section view that I had been working on (and the related NX drafting sheet that was created and I had inherited the PMI onto). Everything opened fine.
What is it with PMI section views and these mysterious errors?? They are intermittent and random. I can create PMI views and inherit onto drafting sheets for long periods of time then rather abruptly, this happens.
tk

 

[g3964]

Hi Guys,

I too got this error and was not able to save the file for couple of days.
I could get around this problem by just...

I cloned the assembly and in that i did not change anything else other than the assembly file.
it took almost three hours to do this. After that I opened the new cloned assembly and it has same parts in it but it is saving

Clone assembly
Change the name of the assembly only and retain all others
and open the new assembly.
try saving it. It worked for me, hope it works for you as well.

g3964