About Force Rebuild & Part Change

[Slasher]

Hi all;

Is it normal SW behavior that you get an asterisk mark next to file name after you force rebuild a part/assembly? Even a completely empty one? Cause I'm getting one.

Thanks,

[josh]

Yes. Asterisk means document is dirty and needs to save. Force rebuild makes a document dirty.

[Slasher]

Thanks; a little off topic.

Say you get an Asterisk when you open an assembly; is there an easy way to quickly find out what component(s) has (have) been changed?

Cause here's my issue: if I open an assembly and it has an asterisk then I say fine I save it so as to capture the latest changes and next time it won't have asterisk; perfect. But sometimes I'm curious to know what has been changed? I have no idea sometimes? especially in multi-user environment.

[mp3-250]

Thanks; a little off topic.

Say you get an Asterisk when you open an assembly; is there an easy way to quickly find out what component(s) has (have) been changed?

Cause here's my issue: if I open an assembly and it has an asterisk then I say fine I save it so as to capture the latest changes and next time it won't have asterisk; perfect. But sometimes I'm curious to know what has been changed? I have no idea sometimes? especially in multi-user environment.

I may take a look at this post:

viewtopic.php?p=32241#p32241

[Slasher]

@mp3-250

Thanks; that was a lot of good info to absorb !

One last thing; so we always have purged configuration data un-checked by default. I noticed that if you delete configurations (say from a file that has 20 different configurations and then you delete half of it) & then save the file; the file size won't decrease to match the new number of configurations? (I tested this only one file this morning; so maybe that's an anomaly). Somehow the configuration data is permanently set into the file? Has this been your experience as well?

It will however decrease if I do a save-as.

[mp3-250]

@mp3-250

Thanks; that was a lot of good info to absorb :D!

One last thing; so we always have purged configuration data un-checked by default. I noticed that if you delete configurations (say from a file that has 20 different configurations and then you delete half of it) & then save the file; the file size won't decrease to match the new number of configurations? (I tested this only one file this morning; so maybe that's an anomaly). Somehow the configuration data is permanently set into the file? Has this been your experience as well?

It will however decrease if I do a save-as.

we do not usually purge configurations and we mainly restrict them to assemblies.
However I can state with confidence that a lot of garbage is stored even in supposedly emptied files.
I stomped on an SPR that pointed to the save as to decrease file size. I also had a case of a drawing that was over 160MB while it was supposed to be around 20-40MB and it still at 160MB deleting even the sheet formats, rebuilding and saving it. it decreased some 30MB with save as, but at still had to delete ALL and saveas to bring it to some 100KB

[AlexLachance]

we do not usually purge configurations and we mainly restrict them to assemblies.
However I can state with confidence that a lot of garbage is stored even in supposedly emptied files.
I stomped on an SPR that pointed to the save as to decrease file size. I also had a case of a drawing that was over 160MB while it was supposed to be around 20-40MB and it still at 160MB deleting even the sheet formats, rebuilding and saving it. it decreased some 30MB with save as, but at still had to delete ALL and saveas to bring it to some 100KB

Do you have that problematic empty file and can you share it..? Perhaps we could all take a look at it and see if someone gets some sort of pop-up that points to a missing reference that perhaps you were not getting..?

[ryan-feeley]

Say you get an Asterisk when you open an assembly; is there an easy way to quickly find out what component(s) has (have) been changed?

There are two pretty easy things that I check first (illustrated below). I think I learned about one or both of these from @Alin.

[Slasher]

@ryan-feeley Thank you; I picked up the file explorer method from the thread recommended by @mp3-250 but never realized performance evolution provides that info as well.

One other thing I thought might be helpful is if you have a large assembly with thousands of parts; the list in the file explorer can be a bit overwhelming to go through and to scan for changed items. One workaround is If you change settings temporarily to force open everything in lightweight; then SW only opens the changed ones in ram (i.e. resolved) and as a result the list in file explorer is basically filtered out to show only the list of changed files.

[DanPihlaja]

Hrmm.

I activated File Explorer and it only give me a "An invalid argument was encountered." on the first time opening it and then subsequently every time I close and re-open Solidworks.

image.png (7.63 KiB) Viewed 3071 times

And if I open an assembly and show File Explorer, it ONLY shows recent documents. Not anything with regards to what I have open.

Not sure what to do.

I did a search online for Solidworks "File Explorer" "invalid argument was detected" and got literally 0 hits. (because if I leave out the quotes, all the hits have to do with a corrupt file in their assembly, which is a problem that I do not have).

If I turn off File Explorer, then the problem goes away. Is this a PDM only thing?

[AlexLachance]

Hrmm.

I activated File Explorer and it only give me a "An invalid argument was encountered." on the first time opening it and then subsequently every time I close and re-open Solidworks.

image.png

And if I open an assembly and show File Explorer, it ONLY shows recent documents. Not anything with regards to what I have open.

Not sure what to do.

I did a search online for Solidworks "File Explorer" "invalid argument was detected" and got literally 0 hits. (because if I leave out the quotes, all the hits have to do with a corrupt file in their assembly, which is a problem that I do not have).

If I turn off File Explorer, then the problem goes away. Is this a PDM only thing?

That's kinda odd, I've never encountered that. Have you tried on smaller assemblies...?

[DanPihlaja]

That's kinda odd, I've never encountered that. Have you tried on smaller assemblies...?

Doesn't work on ANY assemblies. I get the error if File explorer is turned on at all and before i open ANY files.

[ryan-feeley]

Doesn't work on ANY assemblies. I get the error if File explorer is turned on at all and before i open ANY files.

Weird. I'd guess it is a file permissions sort of issue. I recall people have experienced error messages with that text for random reasons and resolved the situation by clearing out the "TEMP" folder in their user profile. You problem seems a little different, but could have the same sort of root cause.

Try opening Solidworks as admin? Or using a different user account if you have that option available?

[ryan-feeley]

@DanPihlaja do you happen to be pre 2022? Found this on the knowledge base that appears to describe your sort of issue. "Closed" doesn't always mean fixed on file-specific sort of stuff. But your experience has certainly happened before.

SPR 1227494: User Interface - Task Pane: 'An invalid argument was encountered' when trying to access File Explorer under Task Pane after change in File Explorer under System Options.

[DanPihlaja]

@DanPihlaja do you happen to be pre 2022? Found this on the knowledge base that appears to describe your sort of issue. "Closed" doesn't always mean fixed on file-specific sort of stuff. But your experience has certainly happened before.

SPR 1227494: User Interface - Task Pane: 'An invalid argument was encountered' when trying to access File Explorer under Task Pane after change in File Explorer under System Options.

SPR 1227494 Invalid Argument.jpg

I am using SW 2022 SP4.
I noticed that when I unchecked "my network places", the problem went away. So I think that it is a company network permissions issue.

Thank you!