Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 8, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 8, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 8, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 8, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment
go2greece Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 Hi Peter (go2greece), - When you were having these problems, were you running 12.5.1.65397? yes i was running the latest version(12.5.1.65397) - When you were having these problems, were you autosaving with or without the backup folder feature? without the backup folder. Did you ever try autosaving with the backup feature set the opposite way? no. - 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? let me put this way, since i am switched of autosave and i am not useing the FAT32 for reference files or objects files i am fine. at least no corrupted files - 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? the corruption happend twice after a chrash and one without any prior chrash. GUNTHER(NNA) has the chrash log Quote Link to comment
Tom4 Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 Hi Everyone: We have been losing files also (on PC's) as far as I can tell it has been on the server and on C - drive. You work on a drawing and when you go to save (or autosave) when you're done the file is gone from the drive that you are working from and if you just hit ok from autosave get a failure message and it is gone (the original file that you opened and the active drawing). The next time someone gets one I will copy the exact message and send it. The problem has been on 1 to 5mb files and at random it has happened with MCD, STA, and exports in .txt format the files are gone and if you do not work from a back up you have to start all over. This only started when we went to 12.5.1 from 12.0.0. Window XP SP2 HP - P4 Duel 3gh 2.5mb ram VW 12.5.1 (64620) Quote Link to comment
Tom4 Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 Hi again; Is it possible that the saving problems on PC are related to Windows Explorer 7 as we were running 12.5.1 for 4 or 5 weeks before we updated to explorer 7 and since that time the problem of disappearing files has been growing. Window XP SP2 HP - P4 Duel 3gh 2.5mb ram VW 12.5.1 (64620) Quote Link to comment
Donald Wardlaw Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 Hello again Mark, <<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>> The only time I ever cannot save a file to the local drive is when I get the dialogue informing me that the file is corrupt. It refuses to save the file. No file will appear. If I plug in an external drive, it will save to that drive, anywhere on that drive. It is not a situation where it is saving 0k files in various places. It is a situation where it will not save to the local drive. The file that becomes the 0k file is the file that I started with. <<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?>> Mark, I am saying that in my experience file corruption is apparently not related to saving at all. I'm just working away and the dialog appears. Now maybe, the file corruption occured just before I got a notice asking me if I wanted to save the file (It's something like "this file has not been saved in x minutes, would you like to save it now?") but I don't know that. And, again, I never give the program authorization to save a file without my consent. So if saving is going on, or an attempt to save is going on, I cannot explain why it would do such a thing. It does seem that something happened in the background. I thought the pdf bug was significant because it is evidence, here at least, that in saving a file, which involves protecting the original and then replacing it with the saved file, the process is malfunctioning and the original file is getting hosed. This resembles closely what is happening in the corruption bug. Good luck. Regards, Donald Quote Link to comment
graham75 Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 Yeah, I've lost about 3 or 4 pretty big files to this issue, I'm using 12.5.1(65397) on a Mac, and I save to a LaCie firewire drive. If Nemetschek doesn't do something about this soon, my company will have to abandon Vectorworks for another CAD program... not because we can't just change our method of saving files (which we will), but my company didn't use VW previously, and I'm the one that recommended it... now I'm in the dog house and will be ridiculed by my fellow designers at work until this is resolved. As for the PDF issue, I've figured out that if you are saving over an existing file, then you either after to rename it or delete the existing file first... otherwise you get a PDF with 0kb... another fabulous feature. Quote Link to comment
graham75 Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 I forgot to mention that my VW also crashes after I try to open a corrupted file... especially fun when you've got another open working file that hasn't been saved yet! Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 9, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 9, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 9, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 9, 2007 As for the PDF issue, I've figured out that if you are saving over an existing file, then you either after to rename it or delete the existing file first... otherwise you get a PDF with 0kb... another fabulous feature. Graham, I'm not seeing this on my G5 running MacOS 10.4.8. Are you running 10.3.9 like Donald is? Quote Link to comment
Tom4 Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 Mark; Should I post my problem in a different folder as you sound like you don't think it is related? Thanks Tom Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 9, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 9, 2007 Hi Everyone: We have been losing files also (on PC's) ... You work on a drawing and when you go to save (or autosave) when you're done the file is gone from the drive that you are working from... Hi Tom, This is more of a missing file problem than a file corruption problem. To my knowledge we have no other users reporting this behavior. We'll do some testing here - please let me know if you get more clues. You may want to move at least a couple of your machines back to the previous version of Explorer to see if that helps. Mark Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 9, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 9, 2007 Hi Tom, You might try posting this as a new thread under General Discussion (maybe "Disappearing VectorWorks Files on Windows"). We'll try to get it to happen here, and I'll keep an eye on the new thread to see if anyone else is having the problem or has any ideas. Best regards, Mark Quote Link to comment
Tom4 Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 mark; We moved a machine back to IE6. One that has been seeing frequent missing files. Tom Quote Link to comment
Charlie_P Posted March 10, 2007 Share Posted March 10, 2007 <<Were you using the backup folder feature of autosave>> No <<Did you ever try autosaving with the backup feature set the opposite way?>> Unfortunately not <<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?>> Yes, at file save time - although I didn't always get to the dialog "this file hasn't been saved for 15 minutes..." before the standard dialog of doom. Incidentally no further file loss at all since I've been manually saving instead of autosaving. Certainly hope you've found the problem though (as it sounds like you have). Quote Link to comment
sarah_earney Posted March 13, 2007 Share Posted March 13, 2007 Hi Mark, sorry, I don't check back here very often else I'd have replied earlier. We've given up and gone back to 12.0.0 since everything was working fine before we upgraded (12.5.x also printed our font thicker than 12.0.0). Since then the machine in question had a few of these incidents but seems to have settled down now. On quitting last night it gave a 'sorry, couldn't save, please try somewhere else' message, but without corrupting the original file. This machine is identical to one other in the office, same spec, same updates run. I wondered whether it had been dropping its network connection and that was causing the problems but our IT people can't seem to figure that one out so who knows! Since it all seems to be working fine at the moment I'm following a very technical solution and keeping my fingers crossed and not making any changes to anything! 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 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 14, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 14, 2007 Hi everyone, Here?s more information on the zero K file corruption problem: Contrary to our initial suspicions, it now looks like "open files that are not yet saved to disk" don?t have anything to do with the corruption. The problem appears to happen when you minimize a VectorWorks document and then immediately save. In VectorWorks 12 on the Mac when you have more than one VectorWorks documents open and you minimize one of them you'll notice that the data bar and mode bar of the newly activated document are not displayed. THIS is when the problem happens. If you don't click on that document to fully activate it, any save you do that doesn't involve clicking on that document (like through Autosave or if you use cmd-s) can or will cause the partially activated document to become zero K on disk. It is still true that 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. At this point we would advise Mac users to make sure their Autosave is saving to a backup folder and to not minimize VectorWorks documents. We are continuing to investigate how to best fix this problem and get it in the hands of our users. Thanks to everyone for helping us reproduce this problem. Mark Quote Link to comment
Donald Wardlaw Posted March 15, 2007 Share Posted March 15, 2007 Hi Mark, Thanks for the update. I'm not sure I know what you mean by "minimize." You mean hitting the green button at the top of the window? Or do you mean putting it in the dock? If you mean putting the document in the dock, I have a couple observations. First, the condition you describe about the mode bars is not the only anomaly that occurs when you put things in the dock. Sometimes when you have more than one document open and you put one in the dock, and you then bring it up from the dock, the drop down layer menu does not show the menu for the file you brought up, it shows the layer menu for the file you put away. At least that is approximately my recollection. Also, the issue has been around a long time. I saw it in v.10. Second, the working hypothesis suggests that the corruption only occurs when a user a user does a save. I have lost 3 files and I don't believe in any case it occured while I was saving the file. I have crashed while saving but I did not lose the file, to the best of my recollection. <<THIS is when the problem happens>> or, it happens here. May happen other places too. Regards, Donald Quote Link to comment
Donald Wardlaw Posted March 15, 2007 Share Posted March 15, 2007 I'm sorry, rereading my post the following, <<Sometimes when you have more than one document open and you put one in the dock, and you then bring it up from the dock, the drop down layer menu does not show the menu for the file you brought up, it shows the layer menu for the file you put away. >> should read, Sometimes when you have more than one document open and you put one in the dock, and you then bring it up from the dock, the drop down layer menu does not show the menu for the file you brought up, it shows the layer menu for ***the file you alread had up.*** Quote Link to comment
atari2600 Posted March 15, 2007 Share Posted March 15, 2007 Has there been any news regarding corruption issues on the PC side? Again, our files are fine IF we work of our local hard drives, not off the network. Anyone have any suggestions? I have also turned off the autosave to see if that helped, and it didn't. It would be really great to get our other employees up to 12.5.1, but right now, we can't afford to make the jump due to the corruption issues. Furthermore, I can't expect our IT department will TRUST any future upgrades until this matter is completely resolved. Something happended between 12.0 and 12.5.... Quote Link to comment
ionw Posted March 15, 2007 Share Posted March 15, 2007 Sometimes when you have more than one document open and you put one in the dock, and you then bring it up from the dock, the drop down layer menu does not show the menu for the file you brought up, it shows the layer menu for ***the file you alread had up.*** This does not just happen with docked items. This also happens when one uses Apple-tilde to switch open windows. Often if one has a batch of files open, and you apple tilde between open documents and say try to add layers in the navigation palette wihout first clicking on the newly active document window, all of the information in the nav palette is for the last activve document. Quote Link to comment
CRSA_890 Posted March 16, 2007 Share Posted March 16, 2007 Confirmed also, We have an employee that minimizes documents, using the 'minus' button, and we have corrected her ways. For us it only happened with a minimize, not an Apple-Tilde, nor using Apple's Expose. This is the case for our Intel Mac Pros running VW 12.5.1, PPC G4 PowerMac running 12.5.1 Running Mac os 10.4.7 Vector-works 12.5.1 (architect/renderworks) Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 19, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 19, 2007 Hi Donald, I don't doubt that there are more anomolies when you put documents in the dock. We've made good progress on our investigation and have found that we are not always fully activating the document that should be activated. I wouldn't be surprised if apple-tilde and maybe other actions that activate documents might cause similar problems. Thanks for all of the clues. Mark Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee Mark Farnan Posted March 19, 2007 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted March 19, 2007 Hi Matt, I don't have anything on this one. Are your corrupt files zero K? Mark Quote Link to comment
atari2600 Posted March 19, 2007 Share Posted March 19, 2007 Hi Mark, No, the corrupt files were not zero k. I sent an e-mail to tech@nemetschek.net on 2/14/07 but got no response. Given their sizes (14mb & 33mb) I was not able to send them through e-mail, and was awaiting for further instruction. Quote Link to comment
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