Overrides on Instances inside Instances get reset inconsistantly

The Problem:

Overrides, whether that be changing a property like variant or instance swap, changing a variable mode override, or modifying attributes directly like text content or an object’s color, do not get consistently maintained when applied to or applied inside of an instance nested in another instance, when the outer instance changes, either through manual modification, or even through changing outer instance variants, when they should be. Some arrangements of this are deceptively repeatable, while other arrangements, especially those involving the parent having multiple variants, or any interaction with variable modes, sometimes act completely erratically.

It’s Effects:

• Completely breaks the whole point of components being re-usable and dynamic
• Creates a confusing, frustrating, and often inconsistent experience when using components
• Prevents the ability to create designs with single source of truth objects
• Makes creating modular, composed component libraries made from shared primitives nearly impossible

Related Threads:

Each of these may or may not be completely the same issue. The issue itself is inconsistent and strange so I haven’t really found a good line it could be split along.

… and I’m sure many more

Analysis:

I think it’s extremely possible that all of these separate threads are actually caused by the same common underlying problem. I can also theorize that the inconsistencies and non-reproducable irregularities that a lot of people including myself have experienced but failed to completely capture due to the issue’s nature, could come down to a partial fix having been implemented at some point targeting just one or two of these situations very specifically, leading to inconsistent and strange behavior in more complex situations. Just a theory though.

Demonstrations:

There are tons of demonstrations provided by people in the related threads, but I thought I should also show the results of my own testing as well. My test’s don’t fully express the problem, by any means, after all the whole point is that there’s both some things that are consistent and differentiable like the simplified demo below, all the way to the most complex demo in the video at the bottom where I couldn’t find any rhyme or reason at all.

Here is the simplified demo showing the problem in it’s simplest terms without involving variable modes or variants in the parent component, re-created from the demo video provided by ​@jnetzlr:

I have created an expanded version of this showing somewhat where the line is in one specific arrangement, but this is less consistent and repeatable then the simplified demo. If you follow the instructions precisely, you should see the same outcomes, but if you duplicated any instance or component definition at the wrong time, or swapped component sources, or potentially even if you did it completely identically, it may behave completely differently.

And lastly, variable modes driving these changes have been noted specifically in some of the related threads to cause additional breaking of the system, I absolutely agree, though I’m unable to pinpoint this exactly. It’s a little to complicated to demonstrate easily, and most importantly, it’s absolutely inconsistent, and I have yet to figure out exactly how that problem can be broken down and demonstrated in a repeatable manner, let alone something that could be shown in an image or process. Here’s my best shot at showing it, there’s no narration but I hope my mouse makes what’s happening descernable enough. Please note that I recorded this 3 times, and in all 3 times it behaved completely differently, so if you try to remake the same setup and it doesn’t even act the same, that’s even more the whole point. Also, I couldn’t find anywhere to put the file up for longer so it’s only up for 6 days 😅 sorry: https://filebin.net/t9hih3957ektnaib If a staff member wants to see the video and it already expired or you want it not through an external site, just let me know and I can send it some other way. (its too big to upload directly here and I don’t have any compression tools)