When editing a part in place in an assembly and making a change, then returning to the assembly, dependencies on the edited part through Inter-part Copies are not updated. But if Opening the part from the assembly and doing the same edit, returning to the assembly DOES update the inter-part copies.
Solution
The Open process does a file transition on close and return which, when we do a file transition, we look at the file we are transitioning to and make sure it is up to date and, if not, we update it. The Edit process does not necessarily do this for all relationships. Assembly mates and aligns will update, but not necessarily the inter-part copies. You can use the Update Active Level command on the Tools tab to rectify this. Also, the Drawing View Tracker in Draft and Component Tracker in Assembly are tools designed exactly for this purpose to help the user keep his/her files properly updated and to assist in that process.
Notes and References
Hardware/Software Configuration
Platform: INTL64
OS: windows
OS Version: 1064
Product: SOLID_EDGE
Application: ASSEMBLY
Version: V109MP12
Function: COMPONENTS
Ref: 001-9648149