The layout I was working on in 3rd Planit crashed and I cannot get it to work. I was attempting to extend a track by dragging on an edge. When I did, a “shaddow” of a track appeared and I lost control of the cursor. It wants to be a draw tool. When I click on anything, I get an hourglass.
I have tried renaming the file. Copying the file to another drive. I
scanned it with Norton Disk Doctor. No sign of error. I rebooted, no
improvement.
I have opened other drawings and it seemed to work fine.
The plan will open, but any action will result in an hourglass for
about 30 seconds, then returned to the same state it was pre-action.
The only way I can exit the program is to use Taks Manager.
Are my last 8 hours of work history. That was the last time I saved as.
Chip,
I don’t know what to tell you about your problem, but in 3d PlanIt there is a setting for automatic saves. Go to the view dropdown menu, preferences, control. You should see Auto-Save box. I always set mine at 10 minutes. If I were going to do some very difficult work, I would set it from 3-5 minutes.
Usually when a file screws up like that, after you close the program and come back up it will ask if you want to use this auto saved file and all will be fine for the last saved info.
Have you shut the computer down compeltely and restarted it? Sometimes that helps.
If you do get that file working again, here’s soemthing to try. If you have terrain meshes active, I have found them to sometimes become corrupted somehow and a problem for 3pi. Try turning off the layers with mesh or deleting the mesh altogether.
Sometimes that will be enough to ease the problem.
I “save as” about once an hour. I shut the program down completely and re-start it every couple of hours. It seems like there is something that builds up (memory leak, probably) that causes these crashes.
Chip,
I am going to pass and let some computer wizards jump in, but I believe that if you manually saved that corrupted file…you are stuck with it. Sorry! [:(]
Chip,
Just thought of something. Check in the directory (folder) where you save your files and see if there is a file with the same name, but has a different file extension or some other differences. This may be the auto-saved file. Don’t give up on 3dPlanit. It is a heck of a good program, but all of them get confused from time to time.
Like they always say: Backups backups backups! But how many of us do?
You might also want to run scandisk. It’s possible you’ve got a bad disk sector that just happens to be where you saved the file. Running scandisk will scope out those bad sectors and let them be marked as unusable. It’s also possible the file got cross-linked, although Norton should have spotted that. You can also run a virus scan. Doubtful it’ll do any good, but you never know (www.avast.com; free for personal use).
hahahaha! Now I understand what happened. Done it many times.
Be sure and set that auto-save. That way if you have a power failure or your file or computer hangs, you can exit and come back up with the auto-saved file. [;)]
Spacemouse,If your using windows XP you can try to go to the nerest restore point.like a day before that happened,it shouldnt erase any saved data just put the spects back,where they were before it happend
I have the same problem with 3PI - which is why I save after EVERY change I make, no matter how minor. It’s enough to make me want to start all over with CadRail or something else, but I REALLY would rather not. I’d just as soon use AutoCAD if I start over again - but I am too lazy to create track objects to use.
Actually I do use pencil a lot, I print out the CAD drawing and then sketch in things with pencil, then go back and add the new parts to verify it will all fit.
If you saved the file as a corrupted one then you can use the XP system restore till you grow a long beard and it will do no good. If you also use the AUTO save feature it will make the program run slower. Just click on CTRL + S key all the time. Some people that have a virus think that using Windows XP Restore will get rid of it, not so. It doesn’t work like that.
I know nothing about this software you’re using, but in my work I work with zillions of CAD files (mechanical engineering/design).
When a design is in process, I often save variou states of my work. (Shaft1, shaft2, shaft3, etc.)
You might have “Layout1”, “LayoutWithYardExtension1”, 2, 3, etc…
Then when you’re at version 7, and you screw yourself up beyond recovery, you just open up 6, and you’re a happy camper.
You should never have to be in a situation where you have to re-trace your steps more than 1/2 hour or so. On a bad day, I may have to re-live the last hour of my life doing something I already did.