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Crash recovery techniques - file comparison


DMcD

Question

HA,

 

What do people use as a crash recovery technique to make sure that work is not lost somewhere in the wreckage? Using VW 2020, 2021   Mac OS 10.15 etc.

 

I get three or four crashes a day (before coffee time) (and we take coffee early around here) and sometimes it's difficult to know what's been lost.  A backup is saved every 10 operations. Once upon a time, VW would tell you if something could not be regenerated. This appears to be no longer the case, lulling the user into a false sense of security that a backup is similar to the work in the original file lost during the crash.

 

Since I discovered that VW crashes a lot less with small files, I have been working on sections of a drawing and copying them into the main drawing only after a nervous save (a lot of the crashes are just after saving, losing the saved work). The problem with this strategy is that when you have multiple windows open with multiple structures in different states, it gets confusing to know what's what during a recovery. When the time comes to work on larger files, it just a lottery.

 

If there was some routine to check and compare two files after a crash, it would make me a lot less insecure.

 

I guess the usual suspects will say reinstall VW, update to the latest version, trash prefs, redo templates etc. I've done all these with no apparent improvement in stability and really, my job is designing not IT.

 

It's not even as if I am guilty of doing anything. The most recent crash happened while VW was sitting in the background all by itself.

 

It's not even as if any other software that I use bombs as often as VW. Adobe stuff bombs but you'd expect that. However it recovers gracefully which is something VW does not do. It's up to the user to pick their way through the wreckage and salvage something.

 

So what's your strategy?


D

 

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I don't have a strategy. I average about one crash a day. While I have found VW to crash more (a lot) than any other software I use, I find it crashes very politely. I have never had a corrupt file. I have my backup set to 10 minutes plus do a save probably every five minutes. The most I lose is 10 minutes work and it never appears to effect anything other than the work since the last save or backup. VW has some great parts and I put up with the crashing because of them.

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I usually do 8 min (or 12 min. for larger projects when backups take annoyingly long)

and keep 3 copies (or 5 when it was crashing too much before).

 

But when I seldom experience a corrupt file, I am used that all Backups are corrupt too anyway.

I do manual Backup Copies for certain states anyway and may use one of them or try testing

through Time Machine backups in such cases.

 

One time I had a corrupt Window or Door.

Once I found it because Edit Mode felt a bit strange, deleted and recreated it,

everything was fine again.

 

Now I often use Purge (multiple times after each other) to clean up Files every now and then.

Activating a lot of options and manually going through each Object to decide if I delete or keep.

Set Sorting by Object Type.

 

Sometimes it needs testing, like deleting half of the geometry in file copies to find and narrow

down or importing parts of the Layers with geometry to find the culprit that causes crashing.

Sometimes it may be just easier to redraw ... 

 

 

BTW I am used to delete VW generated Classes that don't fit my Class Standards every now and then.

Usually you get the dialog to delete or assign elements to another Class.

But my experience is that this is not un risky. It doesn't work reliably in 100%

Some objects seem to not get that their Class has changed.

Similar to Symbols in Doors (like from Revit Imports) that don't recognize that their Symbol was renamed

and such things.

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@DMcD Back in the day - like 2012 - (and you've been doing this way longer than me) my fingers used to automatically Command-S before every viewport update, before touching the attribute mapping tool, before every render, etc.

 

But it's been a long time since crashing was an issue.  I probably get one crash every 3 to 4 weeks.  So it's possible to live w/o constant crashes!

 

Not sure what OS you're on, but on a Mac back when I was having problems, booting in safe mode (or whatever it's called now) and/or testing VW in a different user account cleared up the crashing problem.

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I'm only on 2012, and don't do any rendering (or 3D apart from terrain), altho' I do have some big files (mainly from rasters). I probably get a crash a week, normally on some silly op like a copy/paste, sometimes editing worksheet formatting (can be anything, I logged crashes for 6months once but there was no pattern).

 

I set backup to once a minute (and set to keep most recent three), all jobs into one separate folder to reduce clutter, so I seldom lose anything. I purge reas. often; always trying to simplify the file. Increasingly finding users of any CAD (VW, Acad, 12D, Sketchup, Revitt...) are getting lazier/less technically competent so imported files are full of clutter and default items (recently had a survey file with 900 layers), so cleaning becoming more important than 10 years ago.

 

I agree with KrisM tho', I've never had a corrupt file.

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