Another strange day in the life of Creo

[DeanLong]

I have an assembly that has a sub-assembly within it. The assembly resides in Folder A and the sub-assembly resides in Folder B. Both folders are mutually exclusive but do exist at the same structure level. I.E. the folders are peers.

Nothing is in cache or in session. I have Erased Not Displayed, I have no Search Paths in my current session config. But when I open the assembly from folder A, Creo magically...somehow knows to go and get the sub-assembly from folder B. That should not be happening in Creo. If I were working in Solidworks, I would not be surprised.

I have been doing this Creo stuff for quite some time and I have not had this happen.

This thread is inactive and closed by the PTC Community Management Team. If you would like to provide a reply and re-open this thread, please notify the moderator and reference the thread. You may also use "Start a topic" button to ask a new question. Please be sure to include what version of the PTC product you are using so another community member knowledgeable about your version may be able to assist.

[StephenW]

Uh oh.  Is this in one session or have you restarted creo?

[DeanLong]

Only in one session. I did restart and saw that it behaves normally when opening the first time and then goes pear-shaped after that.

Some other atypical things at play with this one. I have a Step file created from Altium (Circuit board software) that is within sub-assembly B. I also have sub-assembly C that is a different version of the PCBA that behaves the same.

It's a strange day, Stephen!

[StephenW]

I think I have seen this before. If you open it once by navigating to the folder, creo seems to leave a breadcrumb trail. Even though you erase not displayed, it still keeps the breadcrumbs to that folder.

I can't test it at the moment.

[DeanLong]

Can I opt out of the "Breadcrumb" feature?

I tested that and it happens regardless. Navigating to or not to does not change the result. It still "knows" Solidworks style. Is there a devious mole from SW working at PTC?

[dgschaefer]

This KB article documents what's happening and how to avoid it.

https://support.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS105548&art_lang=en&posno=2&q=component%20search%20locations&P…

[dgschaefer]

I did some more testing.  It turns out that the magic seems to be tied to using the "Retrieve Missing Component" function.  If you avoid that and simply either open the sub assys first or use the standard file > open dialog to retrieve them, the hidden search path isn't created.  Give that a try.

[dgschaefer]

Stephen Williams wrote:

I think I have seen this before. If you open it once by navigating to the folder, creo seems to leave a breadcrumb trail. Even though you erase not displayed, it still keeps the breadcrumbs to that folder.

I can't test it at the moment.

I remember the same thing.  Creo keeps track for that session only, even if the memory is cleared.

I just tested it with Creo 3 and found that to be true.  I took assy A with sub assys B & C and put it in a test folder structure.  A and its part components were in the top folder, B and its components were in its own subfolder and C and its components were in its own subfolder.  Starting with a fresh session and trying to open A, Creo could not find B or C.  I retrieved them manually and it worked fine.  I erased everything from session (and verified nothing was open) and tried again to open A and B & C were found automatically.  I closed Creo completely and tried again and B & C were once again not found.

"Intended Functionality" it seems.

[Chris3]

Are you sure it is not in session? Maybe there is an external reference that is holding it in session even if it is not in your top assembly? You can check by closing all windows and then doing an erase and without agreeing to erase scan the list for sub-assembly B

[DeanLong]

Definitely nothing in session. And no other "things" in memory.

[DeanLong]

How do I give Stephen and Doug half a star for both answering correctly?

It is a strange one for me as I have always had (at least it seems so) Erase in session/Not displayed get rid of the links.

[StephenW]

Doug's link shows it started at Creo 1. Probably before that it worked as EXPECTED!!!

[dgschaefer]

Actually, WF5:

There was a Change in product specification with Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 F000

That's Sept 2009, over 6.5 years ago.

[StephenW]

You should give Doug the answer. He had the real info, I only had here-say and conjecture!!!