I had the need to replace some fasteners in an assembly today The assembly was originally created in 2003 and converted to 2004/SP3 The fasteners were originally added to the assembly using 2004/SP0 The fastener part file was originally created in an earlier version 99 and converted with each new release to present. Same fastener part file used in replacement
What happens is the replaced fastener component property changes from "last saved configuration" to "use components in use in last saved configuration". And, the replaced fastener isn't the one selected from the design table list either.
Also one of the two surface mates in each "concentric" and " coincident" used to restrain the fastener to part (pre replacement) becomes confused?. Not a big issue, just don't need the practice.
While I have no idea why such issues are cropping up, I think I have a related example:
A legacy assembly (developed during the use of a number of previous SolidWorks versions) is currently in "native" 2004, SP3 form after recent conversion.
I typically have files load lightweight automatically (for performance reasons). Today, while working on the assembly mentioned above, if a particular operation (such as an edit of one part/return to the assembly) caused prompts (for whether or not to load referenced files) to appear and I opted (YES) to have them all loaded, things really went haywire...
In its attempts to load and resolve associated files, SolidWorks launched into prompting me to help it find files that are NOT among those listed in File\Find References and also could NOT be found while searching the hierarchy of the top level and sub-assemblies via SolidWorks Explorer.
Allowing the loading to proceed to its conclusion resulted in an assembly with all sorts of part feature and mate errors, as I watched parts and sub-assemblies (that are not supposed to be associated anymore) appear on the screen during resolution.
Of course, I chose not to save.
After reloading the assembly and first manually changing ALL of the lightweight files to resolved, there were NO such errors while I continued to work successfully through various edits and introductions of new parts.
It seems as if SolidWorks is somehow getting confused by certain "stale" references - things that once existed but were purposely eliminated (by the user) long ago.
This behavior is quite disconcerting...
Sorry to have been of no help, but at least you're not alone.
(I should mention that I do quite a bit of "in-context" modeling, although it may not be the root cause.)
What you described above sounds familiar. In my case it may have had something to do with saving and renaming an assembly using "saveas", changing part file "references", using the same part file names for the new assembly and existing incontext relationships to the original assembly. I don't remember the specifics of how I got into the mess, only that I was experimenting with the different methods of saving assemblies.
However, I was not using lightweight parts as I recall.
I've had a similar experience after using SW Explorer to clone a subassembly. When loading the assembly (not lightweight), SW prompted me to load referenced documents. It loaded the entire parent assembly. I assumed that I had inadvertently made a reference in that assembly, but I didn't take time to hunt it down. I just reloaded without loading referenced documents, and all was well.
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