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Mark Farnan

Vectorworks, Inc Employee
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Posts posted by Mark Farnan

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

    Just yesterday afternoon we were finally able to reproduce this problem. While our reproducible case is probably not related to every problem mentioned in this thread (especially not Tom's recently posted disappearing files on Windows problem), I think we have our claws on the root cause of many of the issues described here.

    While we continue our investigation, here are some recommendations based on what we know so far:

    - If you're on a Mac and you're using Autosave, we recommend using the "save to backup folder" option so you minimize your chances of losing your original file.

    - If you get the "An error occurred while saving this file. This file is now corrupt on disk. Try saving to a different location..." message, you may find that you are unable to save to a different location (the error dialog will just keep coming up). In this case, try clicking in the document that you are trying to save, and then save to a different location.

    - This problem may be related to having files open that are not yet saved to disk. This would include newly created files, as well as files converted from a previous version that have not yet been saved to disk. Try saving these files to disk before proceeding to work on them or any other files that you might have open.

    Hopefully following these guidelines will reduce or eliminate some of the problems you're having. We'll let you know more as we learn more.

    Thanks for all of the clues that you've provided in this thread.

    Mark

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Donald,

    Still trying to catch up here - When you say "I found I needed one nearby because when the problem arises I can't save to local drive." does that mean that there are times when you can't save VectorWorks files to a local hard drive? If so, are you determining that be the fact because your explicit saves or autosaves are actively failing and notifying you of the failure? Or is it that you go to open the file the next time and it's corrupt?

    I'm trying to better define what you mean by "out of the blue" in your previous message. I'm considering that autosave is a file save just like you had initiated it. With that definition, does "out of the blue" mean you're working on a file and you get a save failure message at either manual save or autosave time? Or does "out of the blue" mean you never saw any indication that any file was saved improperly, but you go to open a file on disk and it's corrupt?

    Thanks for helping me understand.

    Mark

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Waylon,

    I'm not sure I understand your sequence of events here. Let me try to repeast what I think you're saying and you can let me know if I've got it.

    You go to open a file that exists on your Mac server, and VectorWorks tells you that the file is corrupt. Then you click OK on the "This file is corrupt" dialog. You then go out to the Finder, find the file on the server, and copy it to your desktop. Then you go back into VectorWorks and open the file that you had copied to your desktop. Then in VectorWorks you do a "Save As" on that file to a NEW location on your desktop, and THAT is the file that is now ok.

    Is that it?

    Thanks for helping me understand.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Charlie,

    Were you using the backup folder feature of autosave when you were seeing the corruption problem? Did you ever try autosaving with the backup feature set the opposite way?

    When you were seeing the corruptions was it notifying you at file save time with the "This file is corrupted on disk..." message? Or were these corruptions things you didn't see until file open time?

    Thanks for any extra info you might be able to provide.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Sarah,

    Have you seen any more corruptions since your last post? Do you still think there was something wrong with that one machine? Can you tell me if there was anything different, on the software or hardware side, between that problem machine and the other machines that weren;t hiving the problem?

    Thanks for any hints you might be able to give us.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Donald,

    Regarding the first paragraph of your 2/21 post, are you saying that you get VW file corruptions sometimes (and only sometimes) when you try to save to your local drive, but when you then save that file to an external drive it saves ok? When you do see the corruptions is it notifying you at file save time with the "This file is corrupted on disk..." message?

    I can't get your zero K export to PDF problem to happen. Do you still see that problem? Is there any way you can get that problem not to happen, like saving to a different folder or a server or something?

    Does any one else see this problem?

    Thanks for the extra information.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    A question for those with corruption issues

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Peter (go2greece),

    - When you were having these problems, were you running 12.5.1.65397?

    - When you were having these problems, were you autosaving with or without the backup folder feature? Did you ever try autosaving with the backup feature set the opposite way?

    - Do you get the feeling that your FAT32 disk was involved in the problem? Or did in not matter where the files were getting saved?

    - When you originally describe this as a "crash/corruption" problem, did crashes always precede your corruptions? Or are the crashes and corruptions (at least potentially) two separate problems?

    Thanks for helping us track down these file corruption problems.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    12.5.1 mystery bomb

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    There is a known problem with the backup folder option of the autosave feature in 12.5.1 on the Mac. When a backup folder does not exist, VectorWorks succeeds in creating it, but that initial backup save will fail and any attempt to close or save the file after that will result in a crash. Future autosaves for files in that folder will succeed because the Backup folder was successfully created.

    As Katie mentioned, we're working on this problem and hope to have a patch posted soon. You can roll back to 12.5, or turn off the backup folder option of autosave and just autosave "in-place".

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    Enable Interactive Scaling Mode

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

    We have successfully reproduced this problem. You can get it to happen on the Mac by opening a preferences dialog from the mode bar (like from the eyedropper tool, for example), closing the dialog, and hitting "X" *immediately* after closing the dialog to activate the 2D selection tool.

    Please look for this bug to be addressed in the next release.

    Best regards,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemeteschek NA

    Crashes, Corruption and More

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I take it you are saving directly on to the server - is that true? Are you running MacOS 10.4, or (more likely) MacOS 10.4.5 or thereabouts?

    As mentioned on a couple of other threads

    (http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=33507&an=0&page=7#Post33507)

    (http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=33795&an=0&page=1#Post33795)

    We think that when you get the "file corrupt" dialog, that the file is not really corrupt at that point, and that it only becomes corrupt when you shut down VectorWorks. If this were true then you could:

    a. jump out to the Finder and copy the file to a safe place before you click ok on the dialog and close VectorWorks, or

    b. force quit VectorWorks when the "corrupt" dialog is displayed.

    Could you try one of these methods next time you get the problem and let us know what you find?

    Thanks,

    Mark

    There goes another few hours of work

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Ryan,

    That sounds like a different problem than the one I was trying to get information on. The problem I was tracking was one where, at file read time, a "This file is corrupt..." message would be displayed.

    Your problem sounds pretty nasty. Can you tell me how long it's been happening? I'm specifically interested in if it started happening when you upgraded to VW12.0.1 or MacOS 10.4.5 or 10.4.6. I take it you are saving to the server when this happens? If so, do you see these problems if you copy to your local drives and work from there?

    On the VectorWorks user lists Dan Jansenson posted this in response to a user who was having stability problems on OSX:

    "In OSX it's often a good practice to repair permissions any time you install a new piece of software. You can do this via Disk Utility, or you can use any number of third-party programs that work very well. I use Cocktail (http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.html) which also performs a variety of other repair activities too."

    Do you repair permissions/perform other maintenance on your Macs?

    Please let me know if any of these suggestions help or if you have any more information.

    Thanks,

    Mark

    There goes another few hours of work

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi mk/others,

    I hate to hear of many hours of work being lost. I was hoping that my previous suggestions in this thread would be a workaround that would prevent lost work. Has anyone been able to try the workaround I suggested?

    Thanks,

    Mark

    ---------------------------------------

    The suggestion was:

    We think that when you get the "file corrupt" dialog, that the file is not really corrupt at that point, and that it only becomes corrupt when you shut down VectorWorks. If this were true then you could:

    a. jump out to the Finder and copy the file to a safe place before you click ok on the dialog, or

    b. force quit VectorWorks when the "corrupt" dialog is displayed.

    Could you try one of these methods next time you get the problem and let us know what you find?

    There goes another few hours of work

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Tad,

    We have a few other users who are experiencing this problem and we're trying to track it down. One thing I'm waiting for an answer on and maybe you can provide it for me: we think that when you get the "file corrupt" dialog, that the file is not really corrupt at that point, and that it only becomes corrupt when you shut down VectorWorks. If this were true then you could:

    a. jump out to the Finder and copy the file to a safe place before you click ok on the dialog, or

    b. force quit VectorWorks when the "corrupt" dialog is displayed.

    Could you try one of these methods next time you get the problem and let us know what you find?

    Also, can you tell us if this has been happening since you upgraded to 12.0 or 12.0.1, or if it wasn't happening earlier, then it just started happening? Also, have you made any significant changes to your computer lately? For instance, have you upgraded your OS, reset file permissions, or installed any new software?

    Thanks for helping us track down this problem.

    Sincerely,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    Unopenable file: error message "This is an unrecognized file. It may be a...."

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi everyone,

    We think it might be the case that, when you get the "unrecognized file" message, the file is not really corrupt at that point, and it only becomes corrupt when you shut down VectorWorks. When you get the message, if you copy the file in the Finder before you shut down, or if you Force Quit VectorWorks, the file might be ok. Please let me know if you get a chance to try this out.

    Were looking for some common threads here. Can anyone tell me if they had just updated the OS on their Mac server right before this problem started happening? Which of the following methods do you use to open VectorWorks files:

    - double click on the VW file

    - drag the VW file onto the open VW app window

    - drag the VW file onto the VW app icon

    - use the File Open command from within VectorWorks

    Laurence, when you say "no one else has had this problem in our office yet", are your colleagues also opening files from the same server? If so, can you identify anything that's different between their setup and your setup?

    Any additional information you could give us regarding this problem would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    [ 03-09-2006, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: Mark Farnan ]

    serious stability problems, crashes and corrupt savings

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Marek,

    We're tracking this problem on several fronts and trying to find some common threads. Did these problems start happening when you upgraded your server to MacOS 10.4.4 or 10.4.5?

    We think it might be the case that, when you get the "unrecognized file" message, the file is not really corrupt at that point, and it only becomes corrupt when you shutdown VectorWorks. When you get the message, if you copy the file in the Finder before you shutdown, or if you Force Quit VectorWorks, the file might be ok. Please let me know if you get a chance to try this out.

    As you may have noticed from Laurence_R's thread, this problem has suddenly started happening to some of our users using VectorWorks 11.5 also. Any information about what might have changed on either your system or your server right before these problems started happening would be greatly appreciated.

    Best regards,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    [ 03-09-2006, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: Mark Farnan ]

    How to organize classes / Ten Commands

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    > Kevin, you will be pleased to know that in version 12, in the new "navigation palette" (NP), you can select all classes and change them to visible. The whole procedure takes about two seconds ;-)

    Hi Peter,

    You can cut that to one second by holding down the option key while you click in the visibility column. That will change the visibilities of all of the classes regardless of the selection.

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies Manager

    NNA

    Printing in VW 10.5 and OS 10.2.6/7 (Again)

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Richie,

    You might want to try the new raster printing feature in VectorWorks 10.5. If you're having driver-specific problems, raster printing might very well short-circuit them.

    You can try out the raster printing feature using the VectorWorks 10.5 Viewer, available here:

    http://www.nemetschek.net/downloads/vectorworks/viewer10_dl.asp

    Best regards,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies and Imaging Manager

    Nemetschek NA

    VW 10.1.2 crash assigning lines to new class

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Pete,

    Thanks for the file. If you delete that class and recreate it I think that will solve your problem.

    My best guess is that you created this class while you had a very large number of objects involved in a polygon-based rendering. This set of circumstances (which appear to no longer be in place in the file that you sent to us) happened to give your new class a very high number for it?s ?internal ID?, and that exposed this object info palette bug.

    We should be able to fix this problem in a future release. Thank again for the report.

    Best regards,

    Mark Farnan

    Core Technologies and Imaging Manager

    Nemetschek NA

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