ASK 8 - saving loses data

I have been using AutoSketch 8 for some years now and having used AutoSketch since version 2.1 it is vital to my work. Most of the drawings created have a background bitmap showing a scan of a marine chart onto which scale drawings of ships or positions are placed. This means that the file size is often large (averages from 1MB to 100MB), but the problem can now occur on files of less than 1MB.

Over the last year or so I have noticed an increased tendency to lose data after saving files. The file saves without any indication that anything is wrong and when you go to reopen them the preview is still there. The file then opens without stating any errors but either the background image is resized (out of scale), or has sections ‘blacked out’, or is missing completely, or worse yet today all the vector entities (lines /text) are missing.

I have trawled through the forums and have found similar problems but nothing that fixes this. I have tried merging the damaged files into a new file, but this just imports the same data as opening it directly. One of the biggest pains (which is why I have so far avoided signing up to the forum) is that of recreating the problem. One day it will be fine, but then the next it will fail (usually it will then continue to fail to save new files properly until rebooted, but not always). Having Microsoft Word and AutoSketch open together increases the chances of problems, but naturally the Microsoft knowledgebase has no answers, and this is not always the case.

The worst part of this problem is that you think your fine, saving as you go, even saving under different names and printing out ok, but the problem only ever shows itself when you go to reopen the files. For example, if you have the file open with all the data present, save it under a different name, reopen the original, the problem will occur, but the one that is still open is fine (until closed). We have differential backups done throughout the day on our servers now but when these are restored the problem remains. Only versions of files that have successfully been closed and reopened at earlier stages are ok, but this can take several minutes to perform and I like to be able to be sure that my work is saved regularly (automatic AutoSketch backups have been no good in the past either and are usually turned off nowadays due to time/performance hit).

This does not seem to be machine specific either, as our company has several registered copies of AutoSketch and I use it on my laptop, desktop and home machines. These machines are either running Windows 2000 SP4 or Windows XP SP1. All machines have over 512MB RAM, larger than 40GB hard disks and are all at least P3 2GHz.

Whilst sporadic (can be weeks or months of daily usage before occurring again), this problem has now cost our company literally thousands of pounds in lost man hours. Our IT guy wants us to change to AutoCAD as he has been using it to perform the same job without any data loss and it keeps the file sizes much smaller. However, this is of course much more expensive and complex and means I have to learn a new piece of software. The most frustrating thing is that I can no longer do stuff I was capable of doing several years ago with earlier versions of the same software.

The whole of Autodesk support seems infuriatingly geared towards America and AutoCAD not AutoSketch (and yes I did make sure I was on the UK website). We are willing to pay for support if it fixes these problems, but as far as we can tell posting it here is our only option. I hope someone from Autodesk can help, and help quickly, as we are all stretching past our breaking point.

J.Johnson (UK)

 

As far as getting ANY response from AutoDesk in this Newsgroup.....it ain't
goin' to happen. They haven't stuck their head in here for a couple of
years now. It is nice to know you have at least done some research into
this, ie...search the Newsgroups. No-one else seems to.....!!!!!

I will therefore put my 2 bobs worth in.....the key phrase in your post
"Over the last year or so I have noticed an increased tendency to lose data
after saving files." What has happened over the last year or so.....what
changes to your system etc have occured...??? You also say the problem is
sporadic and may be weeks or months before the problem will happen again.
There is an unknown factor occuring within your system.....something has
sneaked in or is sneaking in.

That aside, have you considered using .JPG's as opposed to .BMP's....the
latter being easily converted and we know .JPG's are smaller in size.
Resolution is no different as they are both raster images.

It's unfortunate that (in reality) vector & raster don't mix well....they
never have and never will. Perhaps another consideration is to find a
decent program, which range from free to mega-bucks, that will convert your
raster images into vector images.

I would quite frankly bight the bullet.....give AutoSketch the big "A" and
listen to your IT guy. I wouldn't go as far as buying AutoCAD.....LT should
do you fine.

Ric Norris.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/cavedrawings

AutoSketch since version 2.1 it is vital to my work. Most of the drawings
created have a background bitmap showing a scan of a marine chart onto which
scale drawings of ships or positions are placed. This means that the file
size is often large (averages from 1MB to 100MB), but the problem can now
occur on files of less than 1MB.

after saving files. The file saves without any indication that anything is
wrong and when you go to reopen them the preview is still there. The file
then opens without stating any errors but either the background image is
resized (out of scale), or has sections 'blacked out', or is missing
completely, or worse yet today all the vector entities (lines /text) are
missing.

nothing that fixes this. I have tried merging the damaged files into a new
file, but this just imports the same data as opening it directly. One of the
biggest pains (which is why I have so far avoided signing up to the forum)
is that of recreating the problem. One day it will be fine, but then the
next it will fail (usually it will then continue to fail to save new files
properly until rebooted, but not always). Having Microsoft Word and
AutoSketch open together increases the chances of problems, but naturally
the Microsoft knowledgebase has no answers, and this is not always the case.

go, even saving under different names and printing out ok, but the problem
only ever shows itself when you go to reopen the files. For example, if you
have the file open with all the data present, save it under a different
name, reopen the original, the problem will occur, but the one that is still
open is fine (until closed). We have differential backups done throughout
the day on our servers now but when these are restored the problem remains.
Only versions of files that have successfully been closed and reopened at
earlier stages are ok, but this can take several minutes to perform and I
like to be able to be sure that my work is saved regularly (automatic
AutoSketch backups have been no good in the past either and are usually
turned off nowadays due to time/performance hit).

several registered copies of AutoSketch and I use it on my laptop, desktop
and home machines. These machines are either running Windows 2000 SP4 or
Windows XP SP1. All machines have over 512MB RAM, larger than 40GB hard
disks and are all at least P3 2GHz.

again), this problem has now cost our company literally thousands of pounds
in lost man hours. Our IT guy wants us to change to AutoCAD as he has been
using it to perform the same job without any data loss and it keeps the file
sizes much smaller. However, this is of course much more expensive and
complex and means I have to learn a new piece of software. The most
frustrating thing is that I can no longer do stuff I was capable of doing
several years ago with earlier versions of the same software.

and AutoCAD not AutoSketch (and yes I did make sure I was on the UK
website). We are willing to pay for support if it fixes these problems, but
as far as we can tell posting it here is our only option. I hope someone
from Autodesk can help, and help quickly, as we are all stretching past our
breaking point.

 

In some ways Ric is right - it seems to me that eventually there will be no
AS support and no further product updates. I think that us AS users are a
dying breed which is a shame as IMHO it's a great piece of software.
But - it's certainly not perfect and it has it's little eccentricities and
bugs.
It's hard to know where to draw the line and make that huge decision to put
your faith in another cad program, especially when you have been working for
years with one program and by and large it does the job....


Anyway I don't know it this helps but here's my two pennorth,
I have been using AS V6 for a few years now and in the process building up
quite a large number of working folders/directories with my output - like
2000, 2001, 2002 then sub directories of Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra etc
etc.

I started having some really weird problems when opening AS files - they
would take forever to open and sometimes I would get strange messages along
the lines of 'the drawing containing 3D entities which would be squashed'
etc (not sure on the exact wording here), anyway when the drawing finally
opened it seemed that I could work on it normally *until* I tried to
copy/paste anything from it to another drawing then after minutes of waiting
I would get a message saying that I have insufficient memory to be able to
complete the process and to close some programs (this is on a WinXP SP1 plus
all updates, 512MB/120GB).

So it seemed that something in the AS file was really hogging all my memory
(checking the task manager in WinXP I found that all my memory was in use
and PF usage (page file) was sky high). After a lot of long winded (just
like this reply really!) trial and error trying to fix the problem I opened
the skf file using WinXP wordpad to look for any strange text and there
right at the very end of the file was a never ending repeat of all the
directories and subdirectories in a long text string. This string was so
long that I never got to the end of it after paging down for ever.....

So I decided to move and rearrange all my workfile directories and
subfolders, renaming them and moving them to another drive.

Problem fixed! No more (literally) 6mins file opening times with strange 3D
messages or out of memory errors...
Files now open in a couple of seconds, copy and paste works great and only a
fraction of memory is being used with no page files

Sorry for the long story and it sounds on the surface that it's nothing even
remotely similar to your problem and that may be the case. OTOH it might be
related in that if you have been working with AS for a few years then you
probably have a fairly complex file/directory structure too. Perhaps you
also have some large symbol libraries? Things happen in the background of AS
that we know nothing about (like most programs I guess) and it might be
possible that something similar is happening regarding the directory
location of the large bitmaps/symbol libraries and holding them in memory?
Perhaps AS is just losing the dynamic reference as it's working with them?
It should in theory give some sort of error message but that's not always
the case - lots of times in my case I received no warnings at all - just a
very slow and sluggish program.
Who knows? It might be worth simplifying your directory structure though.
Also the idea of using jpg's insted of bmp is valid too.

Worth checking the XP task manager to see if you have a similar high memory
load whilst running AS

Good luck - let us know how you get on!

 

Firstly, I know that this isn’t really the correct place for the reply but I wanted to cover both responses for which I am very grateful for (as a side note the Autodesk automatic email alert doesn’t seem to work despite all boxes ticked which is why this is a little delayed).

Whilst I am aware that I may be pushing AutoSketch to its limits, my way of working has resulted from long experience of other problems. The image is kept as a bitmap (often in paint shop pro format to be more precise which can help keep the file size down a little bit) as sometime it needs editing after the drawing has been created whilst still retaining the scale and rotation settings. I am aware that you can link to the file instead of inserting it but in reality this often causes more problems, especially if the file/directory is renamed or moved.

I have asked myself the same question as Ric many times before, but the answer is many things. The key factor I think is linked to AngryofMayfair’s directories problems, more specifically, the change in using Windows 2000/XP and OFFLINE FILES. I have certainly experienced the problems described in the response before. The biggest challenge is having to work in a shared environment where my work has to be accessible by others, and in general that means it’s on a server so it can be backed up and is available when I’m not there. This results in a fairly large folder tree often 4 levels deep and 55 characters long (inc spaces but not including the filename itself). I think the biggest culprit may actually be working from the network itself. Whilst this is 100Mbs the amount of traffic flowing over it has certainly been increasing with people creating reports with ever large resolution photos. The speed of saving files whilst online is considerably slower compared to when working offline - I know that Ethernet is theoretically at least 10 times slower than the hard drive but AutoSketch seems to be much less efficient in the way it saves compared to most other programs, especially AutoCAD. The last corruption certainly seems be due offline files as it worked at home but was corrupted when synched up to the office. I do work from home regularly but this is the first time that there has been such a noticeable corruption (due to synching).

I guess the action plan is to devise a way to work off the hard drive of each machine (I often swap between desktop, laptop and home machines) but manage to keep the files up to date and available on the server – all with out using software that might corrupt it. Past experience tells me that this isn’t going to happen as I have worked like this before (e.g. windows explorer and copy and paste) and keeping on top of the housekeeping can become a real issue. However, this might be the only option other than moving to a more network friendly program (ACAD LT). I shall have a head scratch and talk to our IT guy - any (sensible) suggestions are most welcome. If at all possible I want to keep with AutoSketch due to the time taken to learn a new program and the massive amount of past files in skd and skf format that are useful in tweaking and reusing in new jobs.

Thanks once again for your help so far, I think we are at the root of the problem now.

Regards,

J. Johnson (UK)