Cannot Save Plan File

[Anonymous]

I am having errors with saving a particular file in AC23 where randomly I get an error message "Cannot Save Plan File". See attached image. While we do save everything to dropbox and while I am aware this is not supported with Graphisoft, we have never had this error on any other project before and can only assume this is another issue with AC23. I have tried doing a save as to my desktop, to an external hard drive and saving as a different file name but I get the error every time. Sometimes the file name will change to [read only] and change the file name but there is no physical file saved. My file crashed and I managed to open the recovery file, save it, and then do an open & repair where I got 2 days of being able to save the file without this issue but the error has happened again and I can't wait for a crash to happen (which is a blessing and a curse because AC23 was crashing 10 times a day). Naturally the Central Innovation robots have been no help. Has anyone come across this?

Or is there an easy way I can force crash archicad to retrieve the recovery file?

[Barry Kelly]

jamesd88 wrote:
Or is there an easy way I can force crash archicad to retrieve the recovery file?

Assuming you are on Windows OS, you can open the Task Manager, select the Archicad program and choose End Task.
That will shut down the program, and assuming your auto-save is working, you will be prompted next time you start Archicad.

However when you try to save again, it will remember where it was last saved, so you may end up with the same problem
You can 'Save As' but you say that does not work either - I have no idea why not.

I would never work from a Dropbox (cloud) folder.
It may be fine (sometimes) but there have been to many reports of problems to risk it.
Work on your local hard drive (or server) and only copy the file to the cloud folder when you need to.


Barry.

[Minh Nguyen]

Hi James,

First, I hope that you and your loved ones are doing well during these trying times!

Thank you for your question and I am very sorry about the issue and your experience with our local partner!

As Barry suggests, it is true that, keeping the files synchronized to any cloud service will create some issues. When a file is being backed-up to the cloud, its read/write permission may be blocked by the cloud service, preventing ARCHICAD from saving the file. Furthermore, it can damage the file if you keep trying to alter this process, leading to potential crashes.

As this synchronization period is decided by the cloud service, you may not have this issue before, or it may only randomly happen (if you are trying to save the file when it is being carried out).

Because of these, I strongly recommend saving main file(s) locally and have a separate folder only for backing up to the cloud service(s). Although you may need to do an extra step (manually replace the back-up file with the main file), it should ensure that the saving process can be carried out smoothly from ARCHICAD.

Thank you for your understanding! Let me know if you still experience any strange behavior after saving the file to your local hard drive!

Best regards,
Minh

[mikas]

Sorry to hear your experience.

I have had some my work on DropBox for more than two years already. I was the guinea pig for this experiment. Our small company have had all work on DropBox for a year now. I just went and asked from one of our trusted workers how has it been for him. He said it have worked great. I have the same experience with him.

I can't say that it has been _totally_ flawless, but pretty much though.

A couple of times it has happened that there was a problem with saving. No crashes though, and you could continue saving later.

I am not sure about the techniques used by DB, but I believe DB makes some invisible helper files for cloudsync or something. So you can save while cloud is syncing too. If that helper file is in the middle of it's making, you might see errors when saving. But then again, I don't know for sure.

I don't hit the save button too fast, at least not with big hundreds of megabytes sized files. And everything works great.

I really wouldn't want to drop DropBox out of my or my companys workflow. It's great to have _everything_ avvailable to _all_, almost realtime and from anywhere. You are upto-date even on the road, presuming there is internet available of course.

We do have project files, publish-folders, text-documents, libraries, AC installation files on the cloud.
I can copy-paste a link to a publish folder to our clients, and they get the newest documents downloaded. No need to try to send email attachments, and I can be sure they are the altest - no matter who ever published them.

Now that we are mostly isolated and work mostly from home, this is even more important. I can trust I have the latest project file with me at home, and at work. Now that we are opening the country again, and possibly begin to have meetings at site again, I have all of the latest files at construction site too with my laptop. There is no need to worry if I remembered to take them with me, or remembered to move them to cloud service. At the hotel room I can work with the latest files and they just miraculously sync. One less repetitive and error prone task to worry about.

Our DB plan also keeps backups of our files, so in case of a human error, you can go back. It reminds me of Apple Time Machine a bit. I do have my own backups too, of course.

We are on AC 22 though. I haven't tested this thoroughly with AC 23, not yet.
I really don't want to abandon this workflow anymore. This has become essential for us.

[mikas]

And relating to this, please take this as a wish.
We need to be able to assign relative paths for publishing folders and libraries.

[Minh Nguyen]

mikas wrote:
And relating to this, please take this as a wish.
We need to be able to assign relative paths for publishing folders and libraries.

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your experience with DropBox and for sending the wish!

This wish is a long-requested one in our Wishlist Database. I hope that we will be able to implement it in the future!

Have a nice day!

Best regards,
Minh

[Richard Morrison]

I have been using Dropbox for years, and rarely a problem. After all, files ARE local and are being sync'd to the cloud behind the scenes. I have (but not recently) had this error message. Generally, by waiting a few moments and then trying again, it has gone away.