Major problems with Plotmaker

[Anonymous]

Today our office had a major meltdown with plotmaker. Let me set the scene.
Plotmaker is set up from two different files; 1- a teamworked floor plan and 2 - a solo site plan.
We originally had problems with the solo file in linking in a set of details made with the detail tool. The solo project was open in one machine, while the plotmaker updates are made on another. (All of the files are located on our server) I never could get the linked drawings to come in despite several restarts on both machines. I finally resorted to opening the solo site plan on the same machine where the plotmaker file was open. (Not the server machine). This allowed me to bring in the site plan and linked site details.

Now here's where it really gets weird. In going to a different sheet that was previously set up with a sheet full of interior elevations from the teamworked floor plan, several of the files (not all) had reverted to PMK files and instead of interior elevations--- they showed the floor plan! (with the layer setup for interior elevations).

We were able to re-convert these to linked files by individually selecting and relinking. There didn't seem to be any way to batch convert these files from PMK files to linked drawings.

Does ANYBODY have ANY idea what happened?!

A clue: there are several of the PM_UPD files in the teamwork folder. These have not been deleted.

This is also a file where a whole view set disappeared and we had to recreate the view set and relink the files that time also.

Also these computers have not been updated with the latest release. They are still build 1812. I will be updating them tomorrow.

[Karl Barker]

I too have been having a similar problem with a particular plotmaker file.
It has three linked PLN files which randomly swap drawings between them in plotmaker. eg, import 'floor plan building A' and you get 'floor plan Building B'.

next issue is that the pmk files that show up (they were supposed to be drawing views) come up with error ans the status code, and no amount of reinserting them helps.

opening the PLN file on my computer and re-saving it also bares no effect.
I find that i have to delete the link in plotmaker, close the file, and start again.

we are running all the latest panther setup (server and terminal) and the latest building of ArchiCAD 9 NZ.

Karl

[kevin b]

We have experienced the linked files changing to PMKs as well. No idea why but we seem to have prevented it from happening again. At least so far. It seems to occur with teamwork files, when different people on the team end up opening the layout book. Im not sure of all the ins and outs but even when you link the drawings, plotmaker makes PMKs which it stores in a cache file. The problem seems to only occur with layout books where the cache folder is located on someone's hard drive and then someone else opens the layout book. Because the path to the cache folder is now different confusion occurs, there's a puff of purple smoke, and everything is PMKs. The fix seems to be putting the cache folder on the server, so the path is always the same. Its in Plotmaker > Options > Preferences > Cache Folder. So far this seems to have stopped the problem from occuring again. Unfortunately, this preference is file specific so you'll have to change it in all your layout books.

If anyone has tried this fix and it doesn't hold, or it's happening even though your preferences are set to the server, please let me know.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like an interesting work-around, but it still doesn't address why it would be happening to me. One man company - one AC seat, on one computer. I will be eagerly awaiting the next patch to fix this, hopefully coming soon!