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There goes another few hours of work


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WHATS WITH THE FREAKING DUMPING OF ALL DATA ON A FILE WITH THIS UPGRADE?

It's not enough to save every minute or so-I have learned with VW12 to periodically save a copy in case of this zero k of unopenable data that one finds on a file that was just closed with 3 MBs- I try to save a copy and dump the previous one frequently but every once in while I'm working like a busy beaver and just save the working file and then close up that file I've been working on for hours thinking that it actually might retain all that work.

NOPE!- this is an old file (not!) created with an earlier version (Nope!) or corrupted by a system or hardware error. Poof! Gone.

Never happened with earlier versions.

This makes me paranoid just to use this software.

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Are you saving the file to a network or the local computer?

How are you closing the file? (Are you using the File menu or the clicking on the red stop light in the corner)

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No network. I command (keyboard) save/close>do you want to save this file? (I usually just have) so-default yes. I never click the red stop light to close. Go back to file later and it shows up with Zero KB data-unopenable.

I always (well, try to) have the folder in which the file is kept open on the desktop to periodically command>duplicate the file I am working on and dump previous copies. If not- just File menu save a copy to the folder.

This is scary-the file I just copied shows up as Zero KB-but will open with data. But previous file unopenable.

[ 03-21-2006, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Damon Design ]

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Tad, this issue is staggering ... a hard punch to the chest ... leaving me breathless even to consider the horrendous implications. VW12 file saves use the OSX Cocoa Libraries. OSX does all the work whereas VW12 just passes along the arguments & paths. So, basically VW12 is not sending the correct protocol/info related to the file states, and it appears that OSX is simply defaulting to your noted "Zero KB-but will open with data. But previous file unopenable."

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

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

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Thanks for the replies.

I hate to rant because I like VW-It is what I use to earn a living- and have used it for years-early MiniCad-I think the software has improved and expanded its capabilities tremendously in many ways and I still have much to learn to utilize all the capabilities it has.

But! All those potential capabilities mean very little when work you need to earn a living is lost. Its sounds very unprofessional to tell clients you have lost file data to software issues.

I will try the methods recommended and see if there is some sort of pattern that prompts this disaster-and anything I can do to save data.

I haven't upgraded the computer or software other than OS upgrades. It seems to me that this did happen in VW 12.0 as well, but since I was just exploring the new update I wasn't so perturbed.

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Have had the same problem at our office. We are an office of about 15 people working off the server. I've heard of the too little free space thing but we have 260GB of which only 70 is used. thought maybe it could be something with the server but seems like people have been having the problem working locally from reading this thread.

running vw 12.0.1. we've lost many hours of work because of this.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

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?

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  • 1 month later...
Has anyone been able to try the workaround I suggested?

Mark, we have tried the force-quit and it doesn't seem to work.

We can make the problem happen pretty frequently by: 1) opening 2 or more files, 2) saving one file. If Vectorworks crashes during save, the file being saved is trashed, ie. the Finder says it's 0 bytes.

This is happening 1-2 times a day in our 20-person office; all machines are VW 12.0.1 and OS X 10.4.6, and our server is 40% full.

We have turned on Preferences > Session > Save To A Separate File... throughout the office and this seems to cut our losses to 15-30min drafting time when it happens.

This is not fun one. Very much looking forward to the fix.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

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

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