Can't open an assembly

[Maavhamt]

For the past few months I've been building up a model which is an assembly that consists of several parts and sub assemblies. This has going fine up till now when suddenly I can't open the overall assembly.

When I try to open it I get an error message:

Then I get a dialogue box with an error message for each part or sub-assembly:

Error- failed loading file - followed by the address of the file.

In each case the file hasn't moved and can still be opened separately but for some reason the overall assembly can't open it. It has never happened before. I have rebooted n times and can't get anywhere. Any ideas how to get the program to open the assembly? Why has it suddenly decided it can't open the files when they haven't moved and can be opened separately?

 

[Jonathan]

It's best to submit a support ticket for this issue. Our support team or your local partner can take a look and propose possible solutions to the issue you are having. You can open a ticket by emailing support@alibre.com or by navigating to the support portal on support.alibre.com.

 

[bigseb]

For the past few months I've been building up a model which is an assembly that consists of several parts and sub assemblies. This has going fine up till now when suddenly I can't open the overall assembly.

When I try to open it I get an error message:
View attachment 26501
Then I get a dialogue box with an error message for each part or sub-assembly:

Error- failed loading file - followed by the address of the file.

In each case the file hasn't moved and can still be opened separately but for some reason the overall assembly can't open it. It has never happened before. I have rebooted n times and can't get anywhere. Any ideas how to get the program to open the assembly? Why has it suddenly decided it can't open the files when they haven't moved and can be opened separately?

I've had this. Corrupt top-level assembly file. It happens sometimes. Forget trying to recover this. Best is to recreate the assembly.

And welcome to the Corruption Club!

 

[JST]

Concur.

Wastes less time, and there is an even chance you will see a more efficient way to set it up, which may help as well.

 

[Maavhamt]

Thanks guys it's nice to know I'm not alone! But how often does this happen? I could spend about a man day rebuilding the model and then find it happens again. I don't entirely trust the package now, if you see what I mean.

 

[dwc]

Have you submitted a support ticket and asked for help to recover your assembly file as mentioned above?
Such has only happened to me once over the years and support was able to correct the assembly file for me.
Don't panic.
Don

 

[Maavhamt]

We found it in the end. It was a component in the assembly had become corrupted and that caused the whole assembly to crash. It said it couldn't open any of the files but it was only one file that was causing the problem. Once we corrected that the assembly worked normally. There were no error messages saying it was that particular part we just noticed the latest version of that part was a very different file size to previous versions. When we substituted an older version it started working again.

 

[JST]

That does not surprise me.

The error reporting in Alibre is very poor. I have no idea if a program like Alibre can even have better error correction, because it is so complex, with so may possible issues.

However THIS one would seem to be fairly easily corrected by error-checking each file before loading. That does not seem to be an impossible task for Alibre to do.

Even if it takes longer, it might win in the end, if just a few bad parts get found..... otherwise rebuilding the assembly may be a huge job, that would take far longer than another minute or so opening complex files, even if opening is often repeated.

Could be a short cut if the file date of edit were checked.... if newer, check that one, leave ones that have been opened before alone.

 

[Maavhamt]

Yes, I agree. The error reporting didn't tell us anything useful.

 

[RCH_Projects]

However THIS one would seem to be fairly easily corrected by error-checking each file before loading. That does not seem to be an impossible task for Alibre to do.

Sounds like a good candidate for requesting a script https://www.alibreforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/alibre-script-script-requests.20536/.

Select an assembly (folder(s)) and the script checks the parts with a brief report. Mimicking at least what might be done manually quickly. I'll leave any "submission" to those fresh and familiar with situation. Alibre themselves might have a keen insight to what such a script can accomplish. (Cheers!)

 

[Maavhamt]

I put a feature request in the Feedback forum and so far 2 people have agreed.

 

[RCH_Projects]

I see that in the feedback forum.

As explained there I respectfully suggest that a script request is more likely to help.

 

[RCH_Projects]

A final caution.

You should try to determine what corrupted the file. If you have MIS they can do a closer exam of the data in the corrupt file versus the restored file and may be able to clarify what happened.

For myself, last December I was trying to do a crunch project pre-Christmas. I encountered file corruption. Corruption on a single drive without cause leads me to replace the drive immediately (I try to replace drives each year or two anyway).

The corruption presented on 2 drives and could not be attributed to software or virus.

This led me to shutdown the PC altogether and order replacement hardware (motherboard, CPU, memory, etc.) using a tablet computer. When I recovered, some of my files had taking a beating and I had to repair much of my OS from online sources. It took about two weeks to get back to 100%. I still have a few files splattered with Chinese(?) characters.

Had I continued to operate the PC, corruption would have increased and cascaded proportionally.

 

[Maavhamt]

Gulp! OK I'll bear that mind.