I recently came across a case where one of our clients was experiencing an issue inserting a frame member into their assembly in Inventor. They had been using the Frame Generator for quite some time but had not experienced like this before.

When trying to insert the frame onto their drawing, they selected the lines on which to insert the frame, selected the frame size and type, and selected Apply. Inventor then proceeded as if it had inserted the frame, but there was no sign of the frame at all in the entire assembly. We looked at the design tree and found nothing referencing it either.

We then looked for Inventor updates on the Autodesk account, and found the latest to be 2019.4.2 which we downloaded, as the release notes confirmed Improved stability when inserting aluminium parts into a frame generator. When installing the update windows came up with an error stating that the product it was trying to update did not exist. We then proceeded to look in the Desktop App for the update, which was there too. We selected the update which took a bit longer than expected, until we realized that it was updating to 2019.4 first, then installing 2019.4.2. The install of just 2019.4.2 was unable to proceed because it needed 2019.4 installed first.

Once the updates were installed, the Frame Generator was working as intended.

If you are experiencing any sudden issues with any of your Autodesk products, the first thing we recommend is to check for updates. The best place to check this will be your Autodesk Desktop App, it will look through the programs you have installed and updates currently in use then recommend the relevant updates for your software.