My Workspace Went Crazy.

[Bruce Kieffer]

It happened again this morning. I did nothing but wake my computer from sleep, and the workspace was goofed. Palettes change positions on their own. Installed one of my many workspace backups, palettes still goofed. Installed a workspace backup from my Time Machine backup from a day ago. Palettes still goofed up. This is not good. I can not be the only person who has experienced this. I've had it happen on different computers, different systems, and different versions of VW.

[M.CH]

I've had this problem in the past with older versions of VW. The other day my computer (Mac) froze and I had to do a hard reset. VW 2008 was open at the time. After the restart, I opened VW and the palette locations of my Architect workspace were in different places from where I had them placed before. I would think the settings would be "locked" into the saved workspace. Obviously they are not.

I just keep 2 copies of my all my workspaces, as I am often plugging into a projector which completely stuffs the settings. It means when I unplug the proj I just use my second copy workspace.

Easy!

[Pat Stanford]

I think that the preferences/workspace files are actually open while you are in VW. When you quit VW the latest settings are written to the file and it is closed. That means that if the computer crashes, you can lose data.

I agree with MCH that you should keep a backup copy of your workspace. It also means that if you do a lot of shifting around of your palette locations, you should quite VW and restart to make sure they are saved.

Are you sure you restored the backup to the correct location? In VW2008 the workspaces need to go in the user file (~/User Name/Library/Application Support/VectorWorks/2008/Workspaces on the Mac). If you are restoring them to the Applications folder, you are not actually changing the one that is being used.

Pat

[Bruce Kieffer]

Good catch Pat. I did not restore it to the correct location. This business is confusing when different workspaces resided in different places. Do you know why there are workspaces in the VW app folder when the ones that are used reside in the user's app support folder (when set that way)? All of this said, palettes that change size and location by themselves is not acceptable. No other program that I use has ever done this.

[Pat Stanford]

The Workspaces in the Apps folder are the defaults. When you first run VW under a new user, the VW Prefs and User files are created and the defaults are copied over.

Anything that you want to include in VW be it a workspace, a template, or a custom PIO should be put into your User folders. That way when an upgrade to VW comes out, there is no chance of it overwriting your stuff.

If you have an item in your users folder with the same name and relative location as an item in the apps folder, VW will use the one in the User folder.

I agree that something needs to be done about workspace coruption, but until then backup and restore to the User folder.

Pat

[Bruce Kieffer]

It happened again this morning. I restored to the correct location and that worked. The question remains... Why does this happen?

[Pat Stanford]

Do you quit VW at night or leave it running?

It could be any one of many reasons ranging from a subtle bug in VW (doesn't happen to everyone) to a hardware problem with your system (disk problem or bad memory), or even to your environment (are you near high voltage lines?)

Good Luck,

Pat

[Bruce Kieffer]

I keep it running at night.

[Bruce Kieffer]

It's happened to me on 2 different computers, so I think that would eliminate the hardware as the problem.

Edited August 7, 2008 by Bruce Kieffer

[kdumain]

Bruce,

We have a similar problem in our office. In an attempt to use the server to set up standards, we have directed the User Data and Preference Folder to a location on our server. This is good for our symbols libraries and master templates, but its also storing everyone's workspaces in one place. In the morning when you open Vectorworks you inevitably get the workspace of the last user to use the program. To restore, we simply reselect our personal workspace, then we're good. Until we figured out the solution it was really frustrating though. Some office's prefer to have one workspace, but we prefer to let everyone make their workspace suit their needs and level of skill.

Hope this helps.

[Arliss Renwick]

I've sorted it out in my environment. This was happening to quite a few people in our office, too. No one is logged into their Macs as an admin, and their Workspace folder (for some users) was set to read-only. I changed permissions (via Terminal, as root) - chmod 755 Workspaces - and ta-da, palettes now stay put. Bruce Kieffer - I'd probably lay off running Cocktail - if it's "Repairing" Privileges every morning, it might be resetting your Workspaces folder to read only (just a guess.) We're all on 12.5.3 in my office, FYI

Edited August 28, 2008 by Arliss Renwick

[Bruce Kieffer]

Arliss,

Thanks for the info. It happened again yesterday. I will take your suggestion about laying off Cocktail (the program, not the vodka... thank goodness!) I will check to see if Cocktail is changing the permissions. I've been using Time Machine to restore the previous uncorrupted workspace. That works nice. Could someone from Nemetschek tech support possibly chime in on this permissions business maybe causing my problems with my workspace?