It started with a moderate sized assembly and the need for a drawing with multiple alternate position views. The first assembly didn't start off very well and that was documented elsewhere. I had to do a second that was similar to the first. At first this attempt went very well. Built the layout sketch in the assembly, guide the parts to their alternate positions in three predefined alternate configs, use envelopes to hide all that wasn't needed in the same. Pretty slick. Save, save, save, because of a CTDT that appears when saving after activating the parent configuration. Learned about bifurcated assembly mates and how they need careful attention to the order in which configs are activated. So far so good. Open the drawing and the problems start. First, the drawing had a different idea about the order in which the configs should be activated causing the bifurcation problem to surface. Fixed that in the assembly and it appeared to then hold for the drawing. Added a crop to the view because broken views don't work so well with alternate position. Whew, crop worked. Oops, one of the parts wasn't showing up in phantom lines like it should. Fixed that. Fine tuned the distance mate that controlled the alternate positions, filled in the title block and ready for the printer. Save first of course. Set printing parameters, high quality, check, convert draft to high quality, check, line weights set, check, headers and footers, check, pick the printer and hit OK. Walk over to the printer. Looks good from a distance. Pick it up and what the....... The phantom line alternate position views were gone. OK, try the trick of setting the image quality line setting to near high. Nope, that didn't fix it. Maybe a PDF will work, nope, tiff, nope, jpeg, nope, nothing I tried would get the masterpiece I spent all afternoon on to print. I suppose I should try an eDrawing too but it was time to go home and you don't want to be late for mama. And there is always screen capture to try tomorrow..
Problems uncovered:
- Bifurcating solutions to mates which cause the results of an assembly to become unpredictable.
- CTDT in an assembly if it is saved right after changing a configuration. The workaround is to wait a bit before saving.
- Alternate position views that don't print.
- Drawings that don't reflect the current assembly even when it is loaded in memory prior to loading the drawing.
- The drawing actually changing the assembly under the same conditions as 4.
- The drawing not reflecting changes made to the assembly while both are open. Even CTRL-Q wouldn't fix that.
- Broken views and alternate position don't get along very well.
Problems 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 I was able to get around with a loss of time. But 3 is a show stopper and 7 makes the drawing not quite right because it should be a broken view, not cropped.