Disaster! Updating "reference" assembly broke in-context part

tom_auger

Hey friends, hoping there's a simple fix. To create a part that must attach to a real-world object, I first modeled the real-world object, which consists of a simple c-shaped extrusion. Then I added a mate connector and finally created a new part in-context.

Many many features later after running a test print, I realized that one of my angle in my c-shaped bracket was off by a few degrees. I figured I could easily adjust that angle, then update the context of the new part and all would be fine - it was only a slight adjustment.

Well my new part is completely in the red now, and rolling back to the very beginning, the "world origin" of my new part has NOT moved to match the new position of the mate connector, but remains in the old mater connector's position, thus throwing all my USEd elements from the reference part out of whack.

This is going to be hours to rebuild. Anyone have a better idea?

FWIW here's a link to the document. I tried to create a version so I could link to that as I intend to keep working on this project, but I'm not sure if my method for doing that was successful: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/8020f6efccaa36af522f6bbb/v/e506f754a0fdb00143f753de/e/c1187767518e171cf9a1a2bc?renderMode=0&uiState=61d4db35ffd4ec6337266c21

dirk_van_der_vaart

Don't panic,go to versions and history, the left upper corner, under the Onshape logo and go back to the last good time.

S1mon

The other debugging thing I love in Onshape is having my broken live workspace ("main" typically) open in one window and the last good version open in another. On a big monitor it's easy to have them side by side and step through to figure out where references broke or what went wrong.

EvanReese

If it's any consolation, it doesn't seem like a disaster to me. It can feel scary, but it might not be a big deal. Think of your features like a row of dominos and you took out domino number 2. Now everything after that point is "not working", but if you put domino 2 back it will all work again. It seems like you somehow made the surface created by sweep 1 no longer meet up with the rest of things, so thicken 1 can't find all of its faces, and extrude 1 doesn't know what to extrude because the face it's looking for doesn't exist anymore. I think if you fix that issue you should be able to get it back together relatively easily. This is definitely a good learner in being super careful in how you relate things. This design can be modeled in a way that won't break with this kind of change.

Since you've shared a view only link I can't copy to troubleshoot, but I think you can solve this.

Here's a screenshot showing what you should fix first. Note the red surface doesn't join with the rest of the blue surfaces.

tom_auger

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond! I think this is one of Onshape's strongest "features" - the willingness of its userbase to help others on a volunteer basis. Incredible.

Definitely aware of the versions and of working through issues using the rollback bar - it's the FACT that I have to do this manually so often in OnShape - and that, unlike Evan's optimism - it rarely is just one fix - the rest of the dominoes in my experience need to be set back up manually (ie: "missing face / edge / vertex" needs to be deleted on feature after feature and then the "new" one added etc).

But I see this as a positive. My frustration with these sorts of issues over the last four weeks has finally led me to get a Fusion 360 trial and so far I'm absolutely loving it - just seems to much more mature and polished, and generally more robust - OnShape feels very "fragile" to me. I can't think of a project I've worked on in the last two years where I haven't had to make a change to an upstream sketch and then had to practically rebuild everything after that point. I'll definitely take 60% of the blame in terms of "there's more than one way to do it and I probably did it the wrong way" but so much of the time I'm sitting there scratching my head saying "c'mon OnShape, you should have been able to figure that one out yourself". 

I'll check back a bit later once I've run into some of those "redesign" moments in F360. Who knows, maybe it IS all me.....

EvanReese

Definitely keep me posted. To my understanding the way you make references in any CAD system can be good or bad in very similar ways, and the solution is to build an understanding of what the software is looking for under the hood, but if you find Fusion or something else is way more stable somehow, I want to know about it.