lost solids

[Diablo God]

I am a little flustered right now. My file with 17 complex solids I been working on for 2 days, just got dumped somehow..

 

When I pull the mc8 file up. I get this alarm. "cannot find solid referenced by history file"

 

If I click ok and move on. I can go click solids, hoping to find my tree. But all it does is crash mastercam...

 

And I was just thinking to save it as a different name in case

 

Any ideas, I have never hit this one before..

 

Jim

[crazy^millman]

Try turing off shading before opening it up and also change the chord height to like .01 if you have shading to make it go fater an possible not lock up the system.

 

HTH

[Diablo God]

Turned off shading, and called the file up. Same error.

 

Also at the time of crash I was at .02

 

Also getting this error as I play with it.. "no matching op file"

[Eazy]

I have had problems with solids before. My advice is to make a copy of the file that you are working on, every 2 or 3 hours, and put it somwhere else. Doesn't help you this time, but next time it hapens, you will only lose a little bit of time.

IMO, Mastercam does not handle complex solids very well. I do a lot of work and cylinderhead models, 4000+ faces, and allways convert them to surfaces. Far less problems this way.

 

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Madbub,

 

I am sorry to hear about this. What I do is to always run Autosave at every 10-15 minutes. This way at least when you find an issue like this you can immediately go to Explorer(I always keep it open in the background) and copy the Autosave file so that it will not get written over. Odds are you will save yourself.

 

Mike

[P_Scott]

Madbub,

 

What release of V8 are you using? Is it up to date? What are the computer specs for that machine? Video card? When was the last time you downloaded the drivers for the video card and updated the O/S for that comp.? Is there any way you can upload the file to the FTP so someone here may be able to resurrect it? Just trying to help out.

[JG]

Madbub, I have also have lost models for no apparent reasons, along with alt A I started backing up files every night because once I had a crash during a alt A and no file after. I think in my case it is due to network issues rather than MC

[Diablo God]

Peter,

 

Mastercam 8.1, I have never had this problem. Hopefully it is a one time event. I have made much more complex assemblies than this before. I dont know why it had this happen.

 

Specs, the machine is a dual 3.0 xeon , 2 gig ram, pny quadro fx1000 128 meg card, dual striped sata drives and on win xp pro.

 

Wish I could post some of my files on the ftp, but I cant do to customer nda's.

 

jg- I also use alt a. Saved a crappy copy for me

 

As for the backup. I setup a primo file server for the shop. pent 2.8 with 1 gig o ram, with 4 drives 2 striping 2 mirroring. Excelent machine for a file server.

 

I also use one cam station as another backup. Cannever be to cautious. I made a little dos batch program I can click off the desktop, that runs around to all my critical file areas, and xcopy all the latest files over to the cam computer in a seperate directory. Plus every month I have a 1.5 gig usb hard drive, to transfer files for home.

 

 

The good news, I was able to recreate my work in about a hour. Seems the solids all got corrupted. But the underlaying design geometry was right where it was suppose to be. So recdreating the solids went relatively easy. But the file still had errors just pulling it all up. So did a dsave some and windowed my geo to a new file. Worked great.

 

Jim

[P_Scott]

Madbub,

 

quote:

---

Mastercam 8.1, ... Specs, the machine is a dual 3.0 xeon ,...

---

This may be part of the problem. Firstly, update your V8.1 to V8.1.1, it's free and fixed a lot of issues with V8.1. Make sure your system is updated as well with the latest from Windows Updates. Secondly, Mastercam isn't supported on a dual processor system. There have been ways around it, as James Meyette will tell you, but that could be one of the reasons for the data loss. The rest of the system looks good. Make sure you have the latest drivers for that video card. I can't tell you how many times I get Tech Support calls that could have been avoided through regular software updates. HTH

[Müřlıń®]

The dreaded lost file syndrome is alive and well in 9.1sp2.......

 

Autosave alone is not enough. I do what Micheal does and save an extra file on a seperate HDD.

 

Everytime I save, I update the files on both HDD's.

 

It would be EXTREMLY KOOL if autosave would save 2 paths at the same time ....because if it nukes on autosave your in trouble.

 

 

Murlin

[krystof]

I feel your pain I've been there done that live and learn. I always have autosave on but I have don't have anything checked in the autosave menu, under file name I have autosave.mc9 and it save a backup in the same folder as original file as autosave

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Murlin,

 

I also save backups of the files once I get 20+ hours in a job or so. I have been using Mastercam 40+ hours a week since ver. 8 and I guess I have been lucky because I have only lost data one time. Mastercam has proven to be very stable for me.

 

Mike

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Yes Murlin, This would be cool! I will try to submit an enhancement RQ for something like this soon.

quote:

---

It would be EXTREMLY KOOL if autosave would save 2 paths at the same time ....because if it nukes on autosave your in trouble.

---

Mike

[crazy^millman]

Look for Rekd's script and I think you can do that instead of saving it as one you can save it 2 in different places. Might need Matt or Mick or James or Bryan to get it tweaked but Matts post is suppose to be pretty slick.

 

HTH

[Müřlıń®]

Micheal, You are very lucky. BTW....Ver 8 was bullet proof for the most part I have lost more files in Ver 9+....

 

Ya Ron, I think I remember reading he has a script for that a while back

 

Wouldn't it be easy to add a double path the next time CNC recompiles?

 

I'm not that big on programming, but it doesnt seem like that would be too hard to do

 

 

Murlin

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Murlin,

 

I do a lot of fairly complex parts but I think you may have programs that contain a lot more surface milling and complex surfaces? maybe that make a difference?

 

Unfortunately, I very rarely get to cut molds and the like.

 

Mike

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

The last thing a Boss wants to hear is that "I lost my program"

 

 

Mike

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

I have always ran 2000pro on a very lean mean machine. We do not play around with too many things on our work stations.

 

?

 

Mike

[Müřlıń®]

Yes Micheal, all of my programs are complex 3-d surface machining.

 

All of them utilize 3 axis circular interpolation and push Mastercam to it's limits.

 

However, a lost file once and a while is a small price to pay. Just keep all your bases covered and you will be fine.

 

I can't imagine using anything else for machining than Mastercam.

 

 

Murlin

[Mike Whitten CAD/CAM Contractors]

Thanks for the advise Murlin. I agree.

 

Mike