yang686526

empty error message box
i'm working on a small (29 parts, 67 top level mates) assembly in solidworks 2006. at the top of the assembly tree, next to the assembly icon, is the error icon with the red circle and the white arrow pointing down. the same icon appears next to one of the parts about halfway down the tree. when i right click on either red icon, then click on "what's wrong?," the error message box comes up and is completely empty. when working on the assembly, everything behaves normally. there are no problems with any mates or other parts or sketches in the assembly. the only other slightly unusual thing about the assembly is that saves take a long time (about 6 seconds). when i open the part with the error icon next to it, in it's own window, it has no problems whatsoever.
computer stats:
intel pentium 4
3 ghz
2 gb ram
nvidia quadro fx 1300
windows xp sp 2
i've been using solidworks for years and have never seen or heard of this empty error message box. any ideas what's going on here?
phil rockwell
that icon signifies there is an error in the model.

i realize that. normally, when you click on "what's wrong?," you get information about the error. this does not happen in my case.
sorry i got interrupted by a couple of fires which needed extinguishing, and by the time i got back to answering i forgot that the real problem was the empty error message box. senility is settling in faster and faster.

i've seen this with the brown highlight on the part and yellow triangle with down arrow, but not the red. when i click whats wrong, nothing shows up. here's how it happened.
i made a very big top down assembly, with tons of in-context assembly sketches and features, and on top of that all the parts in the assembly stated with an insert part that was used as an in-context part ref. i then took these parts that were created in a top down assembly design and used them in a new assembly that was done based on a bottom up approach. (not the best practice). i did not break the references, but i moved the master assembly and its parts so the new bottom up assembly could no longer could find its in-context reference to the master assembly, the inserted part, and all the parts in the bottom up now had refs out of context with a ->? (not the best practice). somwhere one of the parts that were originally created in context had a sketch error, such as a convert entities where the edge was missing, and it turned the part color of one of the parts that could not find this out of context ref with a bad sketch in it brown. the part that was exported out of the master top down file and used in the bottom up can no longer see the files its in context to so it doesn't know 'whats wrong' but it does remain a brown color. i assume if a feature had failed, and not just a sketch, it would have been red. so i think you've got a part that was created in context to an assembly, but then the parts to the assembly were saved somewhere, and still ref the assembly but can no longer update because it can't find the refs. holy crap, i hope thats not as confusing to read as it was to type.
click on the part, and select list external ref. does it have any? are they out of context? open the files that it refs. do they have errors?
rfus
rfus,
thanks for your reply.
when i opened the part in its own window and found no error icon, i was actually opening the wrong part. when i opened the right part, it did show the error icon, and i found a sketch with a problem that i was able to fix.
still seems odd that the error message in the assembly was empty.
these are standard in catia v5, although usually feature a big red exclamation mark and nothing else.