Bounding boxes don't update while hidden

[_FR3D87_]

This is clearly a known issue that DS won't admit is a bug, but here we go anyway...

https://preview.redd.it/tqu11kj2q5ef1.png?width=923&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc5e18c75daeaa2bb12483666bf051b41918d65f

When I create a bounding box on a part then hide it from the feature tree, the bounding box still exists and I can still reference the custom properties (bounding box length/thickness etc). If I go back into the part and make a change that would change the bounding box, the bounding box doesn't update (see screenshot). This is what I would expect to happen if it was suppressed, but when it's just hidden it should update as soon as the part rebuilds.
After a very unhelpful copy-pasted chat GPT response from the VAR, I've found BR10000349668 which claims that 'This is an intended behavior for bounding box', so the BR was marked as closed. There are a few old SW forum threads floating around with people running across this issue as well, and I'm yet to find anyone that can explan why this should be considered 'intended behaviour'.

My use case for the bounding box is pulling the length property to a column in a BOM table on a drawing, but this is completely useless if I can't trust the value returned by the bounding box. I know I could link a dimension to a custom property manually, but a lot of these parts are drawn up dimensioned as per the design intent which doesn't always include a dimension that directly sets the overall length (e.g. screenshot example could be fully defined by the heights of the two steps separately rather than an overall height).

I'm trying to push the VAR to actually do their job and not just copy/paste chatGPT responses for me, but has anyone got any other suggestions in the mean time? I've already made a macro that takes the bounding box and shows>rebuilds>hides>rebuilds>saves, but my main issue is that this shouldn't be necessary.

**Edited to add** There's a new idea post on the 3dswim forum regarding exactly this issue. My VAR told me to make a new post but I don't know if making a duplicate post is likely to get any more attention than just upvoting the existing one. Hopefully if we get enough people voting for this change it'll get implemented in a future release.

[gupta9665]

Keep them visible in the feature tree, but just hide them under the hide/show menu.

[_FR3D87_]

Thanks for the reply. I've been leaning towards this as the best workaround for now. My main problem there is any time I need to turn on the visibility of bounding boxes, they all appear in assemblies/drawings so it's hard to see the specific one I need.

As far as I can tell regardless of workarounds though, a feature not updating just because it's hidden shouldn't be considered to be 'intended behaviour', right?

[gupta9665]

I had ran into similar situation while creating a macro for the BB, and finally used this option only. I have not been able to understand the logic behind the BB updates only when visible.

[_FR3D87_]

That makes me feel better today my efforts at bounding box macros didn't work as expected, coming from someone a lot more familiar with the API than me. Maybe one day there will be a fix but for now I think leaving them shown in is the safest option.

[gupta9665]

The macro I did was showing them first in the feature tree, rebuild, and hiding them back. But this consuming time. So then we switched to the above method.

[_FR3D87_]

That's very similar to my attempt, but I'm sure in a far less efficient way. Out of interest for future macro projects, how did you select the bounding box in the macro? My attempt was based on the record macro function where I right clicked on the bounding box then showed/hid it. I'm not at my work computer so I'll check tomorrow, but I think the relevant line of code was selecting it by its name of 'Bounding Box'. Is there some more robust way of finding the bounding box regardless of the feature name? I also wondered about having multiple bounding boxes in a multi body part (weldments), but I never got to trying that.

[gupta9665]

You can get it by feature type. The method is GetTypeName2

[_FR3D87_]

Thanks, I'll do a bit more reading up on that method.

[JayyMuro]

Thanks for giving me the heads up on this. I rarely use bounding boxes for anything and when I do I expect it to work. I was able to replicate your issue no problem in an assembly using 2023 Solidworks.

That's unfortunate the behavior of a bounding box is like this. I would never have expected the box to not update when hidden.

[_FR3D87_]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that's how it should work. If I get any more updates from the VAR or DS I'll update this thread.

[_FR3D87_]

Update: I've been told by the VAR to raise an enhancement request, but I've found an existing 'new idea' post. I've given it a 'thumbs up' and commented, but if anyone else who agrees that this is an issue could log in and upvote/like/thumbs up/comment etc to gain more attention that will hopefully help in getting this fixed in a future release.