Breaking external refs

May 19, 2006 3 Replies

I've inserted a part into another part, and then broken the external reference, but it still "knows" that the ref used to exist. This is messing things up further down the line . Is it possible to permanently breal external references?



I won't bore you with the details of why I'm trying to do this, but it involves a workaround for importing surface geometry from Autocad.



Regards, John H


If you break an external reference then it shouldn't reflect the parent at all. Is it a sketch external reference, feature, derived part, etc. What does it know and what has it messed up? Your description is a bit too general to troubleshoot.

I was creating some geometry as a separate body in a part then splitting it off as a separate part. I then wanted to open this part, delete the external references and add it back in to the original part (I'm simplifying the story slightly, so as not to bore you with the reasons why). It won't let me because it says "Inserting this component would cause a circular reference which is not allowed".

The new part still knows something about the broken references, because if you tick the appropriate check box it lists them. I don't know whether the original multibody part contains any link to parts that have been split off from it.

Any thoughts? Regards, John H

I see now. That does sound like bad behavior. If you break the external link then it should be smart enough to realize it is no longer a circular reference. I've confirmed the behavior on my system as well. I would submit it as an enhancement request. A workaround is to save the new part as parasolid and import that into your model.

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