Consistency Checking Error - What?

[Anonymous]

I had a user get this error recently. The screen-shot below is pretty bad, but you can get the general idea of what it looked like. It was a "Consistency Checking Error" and it gave him options to continue without saving, to save with some of the contents missing, or to return to the last autosaved version.

What triggers this? He says he was just adjusting a section marker. Any info is greatly appreciated!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Djordje -

I know that with 9 if you merge into a template, you lose all the views.

Can anyone tell me if this has been changed in 10, so that views, and now layouts, come into the new project with the merge?

I will merge a template into the file when I get back to the office tomorrow in any case.

No - this one is a small project, and not teamworked, thought parts of other pln files from the same project (job number) have been copied and pasted into this pln as they have similar details. I didn't work on the other pln, or the early stages of this one.

[Djordje]

Hmmm ...

I would check the stuff that was copied and pasted. 2D stuff? Details? How are the details linked?

The view sets are a problem ...

[Anonymous]

Well - on Friday I got this message (pic attached)

So it finally came to 'merging' the file into a template.

Merging does not merge any added 2D info from detail windows or sections. As this project was not originally modeled up, most of the section information is 2D, and required copying/pasting from a the project backup of a few days earlier. Then of course saving all the views with correct zooms, output settings and scales. I spent a good 4 hours (which I'm now making up for at the office in my own time) fixing the project. Redoing something that was set up perfectly for output in the first place is not my idea of what we're here for.

These kind of "consistency" errors should not happen. What doesn't help is that, as mentioned before, there is no clue as to what causes them, so they cannot be properly avoided in the future... a mystery. We have enough stresses without added "mysteries" to solve in the process, while losing productivity.

[Andy Thomson]

I got one of these just last week setting windows to show labels in elevations. All my windows disappeared, then AC gave me that lovely dialogue.
'Save Anyway' then brought up a warning that said 'Cannot Save PLN'. Nice.

The workaround was to save the file locally, with a new name. Then open an older version of the file, cut-paste the walls in question into the file, delete the bizarre windowless walls, resave, all is well in the world again. It is often not so easy to spot the culprits. Here they blew up right in front of me.

Sometimes it is good to save a new file-version every couple of days for just this reason.

[Rob]

Sometimes it is good to save a new file-version every couple of days for just this reason.

I just really, really don't like it....

[Tom Krowka]

I am not a fan either. Had a consistency error message also when trying to save ....and saved anyway. Closed the .pln. Next day, crashes during the opening process.
Am really getting tired of all the problems lately with AC. Of course, can be human error, but would like the program to let me know what the ##$!!@#$# the problem part is, or what is not consistent.

I have an earlier version I salvaged, but want to know how to avoid in the future. Worthless if AC tells me I have a problem. Big deal. Seems like the programmer had to go to lunch and never completed the error message proces.

Either let me fix it, AC fix it automatically, or give me a refund and I'll buy some other program.

[ares997]

Yes there is something, probably a legacy issue between AC10 files and AC11 stuff. Though for this problem I have found a work around. If it crashing upon start up keep opening it, maybe reset your cpu a few times, reset Archicad (option&File New&Reset All), then once you finally get your crappy file with a bunch holes opened after a hour or so, create a teamwork file, update all the drawings, save out every possible file type AC can read.

Basically it's the inverse solution that hardcore teamworkers use to fix consitency issues. If your in teamwork you save out as a pln. Now you are in a pln create a plp. My theory is that there is something messed up with how the files are reading or updating, maybe a ordering issue or something.

But I had this problem today, it started after a simple spell check, and then a 'check for duplicates.' The weird thing was that I had 1400 duplicates, which seemed a little high, I then deleted them and right when I pushed the button 'delete' I/O errors popped up like I've never seem before. It had to be over a hundred, and I knew that if I didn't go through and say okay I was going to loose some valuable work. When quit the file to get a fresh start and came back the file said it couldn't read 22megs of a 26.5meg file. Thus I spent 3 hours going through and updating the drawings which was really abnormally slow, then finally once I could create a plp I did, sent and received a few times, and lost all the errors going through these steps.

There has to be something up with a library part or something within ac11 that doesn't react with ac10 files, some way the CODE was altered between the two versions. I will go to the grave for Archicad and Graphisoft but after the last 6 months on AC11 I feel like GS is digging there own grave and mine along with it.

[Tom Krowka]

Amen to that, brother.

[Anonymous]

I really hate to awaken this topic .....but.......
I'm on AC 11 and I got this message about 2 days ago, the only thing I did between the time I last saved without getting the message and when I got the message for the very first time was an seo operation on a terrain and adjusted the size of a skylight......

Any update on what really causes this error and how to resolve it without guessing?

Just a side note: My ArchiCAD, Library and Mac OS is up to date.

[Link]

junior wrote:
Any update on what really causes this error and how to resolve it without guessing?

Sorry, I can only offer you a guess, but at least it's somewhat educated!

IME experience this often occurs on computers with an error on the hard drive, like a bad sector. Is your HDD old? Have you defragged it lately? If not, I would recommend it along with saving the file somehwere else.

Just a suggestion, but I can't say it's 100% accurate or what GS suggests with this warning.

Cheers,
Link.