Symbol disappears when editing nested symbol

[hungerf9]

This morning I was working on a symbol for a custom spiral staircase. I was within the larger symbol, and from within the "edit symbol view" I selected to edited the "tread" symbol which is nested within my "staircase" symbol (The staircase is composed entirely of tread symbols.)

When I clicked the button to exit the edit screen for the tread symbol, I was returned to a design layer instead of the edit symbol screen for the staircase. And more than that, my staircase symbol had vanished from the resource browser.

Fortunately the tread remains, so I didn't lose too much work, but this is still irritating. I've had strange behavior like this happen when I've edited nested symbols before, but it hasn't necessarily been consistent. I was going back and forth between the nested and larger symbol for over an hour of drafting before this happened.

Is this a bug, or do I need to modify my behavior in some way?

[Travis]

Andrew,

Make sure all your classes are turned on (they probably are).

Are your staircase symbol, and the nested symbols, 3D elements? If so, try viewing from a 3D perspective. My memory of v10 is a little rusty, but I recall a similar problem. We were using one of VW's stair plug-in objects (PIOs) and after some number of edits, it completely disappeared from "2D space". It would still show up as a wireframe in 3D, but refused to show its face in 2D. We never did solve it. We worked around it by creating another 2D-only symbol and then grouping the two symbols together to keep them properly referenced. . .the project was just too near completion to warrant starting over on the stair elements.

This "vanishing" symbol problem hasn't recurred in later versions, for whatever that's worth.

Good luck,

[hungerf9]

Travis,

All of my relevant classes were turned on and I was editing solely in 3-d mode.

The peculiar thing was that the symbol didn't just disappear on the screen; when I exited from editing the nested symbol the combined symbol no longer existed in the Resource Browser, as though I had deleted it. Which I hadn't.

Very peculiar. I've redrafted it and am trying to negate a recurrence of the problem by saving very, very frequently.

I also recall having the vanishing symbol problem in version 10 that you mention...I don't think it's recurred in later versions either.

Thanks for your reply.

[Travis]

I also recall having the vanishing symbol problem in version 10 that you mention...I don't think it's recurred in later versions either.

I mentioned v10 because I thought that was noted in your signature line. Either you've updated it, or I misread it. (The latter being very possible)

To further the discussion more precisely: it is possible to delete a symbol (or group for that matter), even from the resource browser, by deleting all of the elements it contains and then closing it. And it would fit what you describe. The nested symbol(s) would still exist after you deleted all occurrences of them in the larger symbol. If that happened inadvertently, perhaps you can be aware of it in the future when a simple undo would (expectedly) revert everything back as it was.

Good luck,

[hungerf9]

I can't think of how I would have deleted all of the nested symbols from the larger symbol, but I suppose that it's possible.

The especially maddening thing, and what leads me to believe that it may have been a software rather than an operator error, is that it wasn't "un-doable." I stepped back through every change I had made since entering the nested symbol (only a handful) but it wouldn't step back to the point when I was in the larger symbol.