Hi everyone,

I’ve been running into a frustrating issue in SolidWorks 2024 that only started about a month ago or so ago, and I’m hoping someone here has seen this before.

I’m working in an assembly where components are fully defined with mates (no (-) symbols, everything locked down as expected). I then use a pattern-driven component pattern to replicate components based on an existing feature pattern.

Initially, everything works fine. However, after rebuilding, saving/reopening, or continuing to work in the assembly, the patterned components suddenly become underdefined (showing (-)). It is to be noted that the parent component does not become undefined when this occurs. 

A few things I’ve noticed:

• All components are fully defined before applying the pattern.
• The issue only appears after using the pattern-driven component feature.
• Suppressing and unsuppressing the pattern or affected components temporarily fixes it, but the problem always returns.
• A full rebuild (Ctrl+Q) doesn’t reliably resolve it.
• I’m not seeing any mate errors or missing references.
• This behavior just started recently; my workflow hasn’t really changed.

This is happening at the assembly level; the part files themselves are fine and fully defined when opened individually.

Has anyone experienced patterned components losing their fully defined status like this? Is this a known bug with pattern-driven components, or could there be something subtle going on with mates, external references, or rebuild order?

Any ideas, workarounds, or things to check would be really helpful.

Thanks in advancemates