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Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Random Software Surprise of the Day

“My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.”
Computer Proverb

Before I get started, I'll put in the standard disclaimer that the images I use aren't the actual assembly.  The real assembly was customer data, which I can't post here.  Consider it a 'dramatization'.

Today I ran across one of those little random issues that makes no sense, until you try that 'one thing'.

What was that?  I encountered an Inventor assembly file that was crashing when placing an angle constraint in an assembly.   One time, every time, just like clockwork. 


Could it be that the Angle constraint was broken ?!?

I checked all the initial things.  Cleaned up temp space, checked the video settings.

None of it helped.

I tried reproducing the error in a different assembly file.  That file works perfect.  At least now I know I've narrowed it down to something in that file.


Staring at the file, looking for a culprit, my eyes fall upon two components that were downloaded from a third party site. 

Could it be? 

For the heck of it, I remove the two third party files from the file and try it again. 

I hold my breath for a second.  It works perfectly, just as advertised.  It seems one of those third party components had a corruption in it that was killing the file.

So what's my big lesson?  While I'm a huge fan of third party components, there is some bad stuff floating out there.  I'm certain it's not intentional, but every download can't be perfect.

As Damon Runyon put it "Trust but Verify".  If an assembly suddenly starts 'acting up'.  You might want to remove some of that third party content.   A corrupted file might be the cause of your woes.

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