ID'ing rolled back parts in assembly

[EvanDH]

thread559-187566

Hi,

I have same exact question as original poster in the thread reference aboove.

except I am using SW2010.

I have execute step 1. in the 4th reply, but do not see how this help me find the rolled back parts. The assembly opens with the same prompt?

I have execute procedure in 5th reply. The problem is, I do not get a dialog as described in step 4. Further, the statement after "voila!" does not describe the behaviour I observe.

Rather, I am again only prompted by "This document contains other parts and/or assemblies that were saved in a rolled back state. Do you want to roll them forward?", with no indication as to which part(s) and/or assembl(y/ies) it may be referring.

Can someone help me?

 

[handleman]

This macro will roll 'em all forward.

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[EvanDH]

Thank you, but that is exactly what I am trying to avoid. I would answer "yes" to the prompt if I wanted the parts rolled forward.

The parts are intentionally rolled back to to hide revisions that we have not implemented now but may in the future. What I am trying to do, is ID exactly which parts those are, so I can go back and leave the final features suppressed instead of rolled back.

With all parts rolled forward, I get dozens of mate errors. I have started going through and figuring out "by hand" which parts got rolled forward. It is a relatively painful process because I must also figure out exactly how far back up the tree I need features suppressed.

 

[Updraft]

Wow! Using rolled back states for revisions?! I see nightmares with this approach. Try instead using configurations where the new features/dimension values are different from one config to another. This is far from the preferred method, but miles ahead of using rolled-back states.

- - -Updraft

 

[EvanDH]

Thank you for the advice. I do use configurations. In this particular case I am trying to clean up some work done by our electronics guy, who is no longer with us.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Using rolled back states to create a revision = Suicide by quicksand

 

[EvanDH]

Thank you for the feedback. Once again, I already understand this was not the correct route to choose, nor am I the one who chose it.

As helpful as these reiterations of my situation's grimness are, is there someone who could instead suggest the best way out?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Yeah, sorry that wasn't very helpful.

Is the revision level somehow 'described' in the description or by other means in the FM? If it is, take a screenshot to record the status.

You may just have to scour through each and every part to find the rollbacks, and recreate the rev via configs or preferably by creating a separate file.

The FM can be fully expanded by selecting the top component and hitting the * key on the number pad.

The rolled back parts will have suppressed features.

 

[EvanDH]

Cool shortcut with the numeric-*, I only knew the other direction, shift-c.

Yup.... suspected I'd need to go through each part. Was just hoping for a convenient trick. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

handleman ...

Instead of rolling the parts forward, could your macro be modified to just display a list of the rolled forward parts, or better yet open them all for editing?

 

[Updraft]

Evan,

In the rolled-back state the features below the rollback bar are effectively suppressed. Let's asssume your part is in its initial release up to to the rollback bar and the next feature is called Rev-A and the feature after that Rev-B. Then you can easily make configs with those two features suppressed for the Default or initial release config and then Rev-A with its feature(s) unsupressed, etc. I trust you know how to to do this, but I don't understand why you are not doing at least this to deal with your revisions.

The sooner you get away from the rollback situation the better. This is especially true if these files are accessed by anyone else and they don't know how you are treating them. The magic eight-ball says bad things await you. . .

Just my $.02.

- - -Updraft

 

[handleman]

Sure...
Any macro can be modified to do anything... Where's the line between rewrite and modify? The macro only had a few lines to start with.

Dim swApp As SldWorks.SldWorks
Dim swDoc As SldWorks.ModelDoc2
Dim swFeatMgr As SldWorks.FeatureManager
Dim swFeat As Feature
Dim sList As String
Sub main()

Set swApp = Application.SldWorks
Set swDoc = swApp.GetFirstDocument
sList = ""
While Not swDoc Is Nothing
Set swFeat = swDoc.FeatureByPositionReverse(0)
If Not (swFeat.IsRolledBack = False) Then
sList = sList & vbCrLf & swDoc.GetPathName
End If
Set swDoc = swDoc.GetNext
Wend

MsgBox "Rolled back documents: " & vbCrLf & sList

End Sub

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[EvanDH]

In the rolled-back state the features below the rollback bar are effectively suppressed. Let's asssume your part is in its initial release up to to the rollback bar and the next feature is called Rev-A and the feature after that Rev-B. Then you can easily make configs with those two features suppressed for the Default or initial release config and then Rev-A with its feature(s) unsupressed, etc. I trust you know how to to do this, but I don't understand why you are not doing at least this to deal with your revisions.

I am doing that!

Here's the full backstory, which I initially left out to keep the question concise.

The particular assembly in question is a controls box put together some months ago by an electrical engineer, not a CAD specialist. It's a "black box" as far as I'm concerned, it interacts very minimally with the parts I design. I pretty much just mate the box into position for the sake of completeness of the overall model. A bunch of wires plug into it but the routing is very easy so we haven't found it time-effective to model the wiring.

So for months, every time I open the overall model, I get prompted about the rolled back parts. It never really bothered me, as the problem was confined entirely within the black box and did not affect my designs. The only inconvenience was answering the prompt every time. Fast forward to this week, and I have a memo that says, all models must open without any prompts, warnings, errors, etc. Perfectly reasonable. Except the electronics guy isn't at the company anymore so this had now become my lovely little problem.

Thus the initial question.

 

[ShaggyPE]

You mentioned earlier that he "is no longer with us." Does that mean when this technique was discovered... he was promptly killed?

-Dustin
Professional Engineer
Pretty good with SolidWorks

 

[KevinDeSmet]

In his defence though, Solidworks doesn't play well with mixing different styles of working together. And I don't care whether that's a lack of standardization or user error or company management flaws.. any parametric modeler simply needs to do better on that! (my 2 cents)

Certified SolidWorks Professional