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persistent scaling issue after importing a SAT file

persistent scaling issue after importing a SAT file

Hello to everybody on the forum,

there does not appear to be a "discuss problems with alibre" category on this forum, so I'll post this message here. I just want to find out, if there is anybody else who ever had the kind of problem I will descibe below (And - of course - if there has been a solution found ).

Today I ran into a strange problem, and after some investigation and trying, I believe I am on to some sort of bug here. The issue appears to follow a system.

Here is what happened:
I always work in millimeters. I imported a SAT file. This file has been written in inches in Ashlar-Vellum Cobalt v7.2, which is based on an ACIS kernel as well. I know this application does not write units to the file header. For this reason, I checked "override units" in the import options dialog, and selected "inches" from the pulldown menu. Because I have some more of these files to import, I checked "set as default", so I could import several files using the same settings.
Import worked without any issues, then. Once I had the parts in Alibre, I changed units to millimeters and saved the file. I checked on the accurate size of the geometry by comparing reference dimensions. It was OK. I have done this several times before, and it always worked OK. The only difference in the process was checking "set as default" this time in the import options, which I never did before.

The next step was creating shop drawings of the parts. Here is where the scaling issue comes up: Now ALL files I create drawings of, come in at a wrong scale, even geometry I just created in Alibre.

Objects that are meant to be 1000mm (and which ARE 1000mm in the part file!) come in at 25400mm in a drawing, though all unit preferences (system and file) are set to millimeter now, and the geometry has been created with the same settings.
I tried shutting down and restarting the machine.
I tried importing another SAT file and when presented with the import options dialog, I specified different override units and set them as default, but this did not revert the effect. The error that has happened, appears not to be replicable, or at least not reversible.

What can I do about it? Right now, I can not create any drawings no more, or if, I can not dimension them properly.

Is there some kind of prefs file that carries the unit information and that might have been corrupted? Can I reset this file?

If I do a reinstall, I suspect I also have to reinstall and register all the add-ons, and I also think that I will probably have to reinstall every time I do an import of a file that is in inches, then.

Does any of you have a solution?


Best regards,

Martin Kopplow
 

MilesH

Alibre Super User


Hi martin,

Have you filed this as a Support Incident?

Have you tried creating a new Drawing Template?
 

jwknecht

Alibre Super User


I ran into a problem last night with an imported STEP214 file. It was very strange and I did not have too much time to troubleshoot it, so I went another direction. I vaguely remember that others might have posted about this.

What happened: I imported a STEP file (I think it was originally created in SW). It imported fine, and I saved the part. Then, I wanted to modlify it by boolean addition of a simple flange that was previously created in Alibre. Inserted the flange within the boolean unite command. So far, so good. But, upon execution of the boolean unite, the flange scaled down in size to a very small object. It seems the boolean command has some bug with units.

Instead of looking into it further, I just re-created the flange manualy onto the imported part.

I am not sure if this is related to the issue that you saw.
 

MilesH

Alibre Super User


John,

I seem to remember a bug related to SAT imports (which a boolean object is) reverting to the default cm units....
 

wathavy4

Alibre Super User
Re: persistent scaling issue after importing a SAT file

martin kopplow said:
Hello to everybody on the forum,

there does not appear to be a "discuss problems with alibre" category on this forum, so I'll post this message here. I just want to find out, if there is anybody else who ever had the kind of problem I will descibe below (And - of course - if there has been a solution found ).

Today I ran into a strange problem, and after some investigation and trying, I believe
---- < Snipped >-----
Martin Kopplow

Hello Martin,
I have had no problem yet on the same symptom though, whenever I am convinced it could be originated Alibre's misfortune not mine, I present them detailed description with files / views into web page here.
https://www.alibre.com/support/incidentnew.aspx

There Alibre kindly and happily supports 'buggy' deed of their product, as far as I know.

P.S.
Programs are product of human, human makes mistakes and they ought to be noticed to be corrected, unless program scripts are self healing on logical behaviour which leads to programing firms managements' heaven.

Wathavy
 

jwknecht

Alibre Super User


Thanks Miles. That second one is it exactly, because mine was a part boolean, not an assy boolean.

I would expect that this should be fixed in the next minor rev. Surely it is a known bug by now.
 

MilesH

Alibre Super User
Re:

jwknecht said:
Thanks Miles. That second one is it exactly, because mine was a part boolean, not an assy boolean.

I would expect that this should be fixed in the next minor rev. Surely it is a known bug by now.

I would file it again, John, just to be sure :wink:
 
Re:

jwknecht said:
Martin,

Sorry, I feel like I hijacked your post.

JW,

after looking at it in more detail, I think this was no hijacking at all. It's connected. Thank you all for the additional input.

There appears to be an issue with writing the units to the files: Maybe Alibre just copies them from the imported source file, instead of over-writing them with the actual settings, so that when we perform any operation on them, be it booleans or drawings or inserting them in assemblies that also include parts created within Alibe or other sources, we get a scaling issue.

This only happens then, because only then the data is read from the file, not from the memory. This is a guess, of course. I'm a designer, not a developer ;O)

One more thing I found:
When importing SAT files I always get a scaling issue either in the 3D workspace, or if I override units, in the drawing workspace. One of them is always scaled by a factor 0f 25.5 be it up or down. When I import a STEP file, I can override units on import, and will not have any scaling issues anytime later. This means that Alibre treats the data differently, depending on source format. Once imported, I believe data should be treated just the same, no matter where it came from.

I discussed this with support, but they could not yet provide a logical explanation or even a fix.


Best regards,

Martin
 
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