all custom project library parts vanished- HELP

[Anonymous]

A nightmare I never imagined:

I am working on an old but ongoing project in Archicad 9.0, on a Mac with OS 10.5.8.

I created 3 similar custom library parts, saving each into my specific custom library parts folder for that project (where there are about 100 custom parts). After completing and before viewing in the 3D window, I placed each of them on the plan where their 2D symbols imaged properly. While saving as Objects, only the last of the 3 had required that I shorten its name in order for Save to be available. Then I selected all 3 and viewed the 3D window, where only the last would image; the first two received error messages.

I realized their names might be too long as well. Opening them with Command T brought (as I recall) error messages, and the suspicion they were missing.

In the Finder, I went to my loaded custom Project Libraries folder, where I found all my usual custom library part folders, except for this project's! In place of its folder was an Archicad Object file (.gsm) with its name matching the missing custom library parts folder "515.5 gallery". That folder is now "515.5 gallery.gsm" (20k size), and its icon is an Archicad object. Opening it gets an Archad error message that the name is too long.

All the laboriously crafted custom library parts relied upon for this project now show up as Missing, and none show up when searching my hard drive! They have vanished and apparently have been displaced by one small corrupt library Object. Alarm clock, please.

How could the contents of a custom library part folder vanish from my hard drive, in the process of making a custom library part? They are not in my trash. I am desperate for some assistance. Thank you in advance.

[Thomas Holm]

I'm sorry, not able to determine the precise cause or give any substantial help, I do have some advice that's probably too late:
. You should have backups!
- You're running an old version of Archicad on a system (I'd guess an Intel Mac) that wasn't even imagined when the program was released. This makes it vulnerable.
- If it's an Intel mac, AC9 is running in the "emulated PowerPC environment" called Rosetta, which translates the program's processor instructions to the Intel processor in the machine. This makes the system even more vulnerable.
- You're using characters that are reserved for the operating system (the . dot) in file names. This is dangerous, it might confuse any program or system and screw up any part of the Save process. This is probably the cause for the issue you are having, where a folder including its contents seems to have been overwritten by a file.
The recommendation is to NEVER use anything but ordinary letters or mumbers in file or folder names. No dots, no slashes, colons etc, preferably not even spaces. If you must, ordinary hyphens - , or underscore _ characters may be used, but nothing else.
- To fix this, probably the only way now is to find a backup. The best new feature of Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard was the introduction of the Time Machine backup system. You were prompted to activate it when you installed the system, or when you first started the machine if you bought it with Leopard installed. If you had TimeMachine activated, you should be able to find your objects there. If not, I do hope you had some other backup.

[Anonymous]

Hi Thomas.

Thanks for your help.

It's a convergence of the worst. My G5 is a last generation PowerPC. The "515.5 Gallery" was a defunct title I'd forgotten about, then to aggravate things, I included feet (') and inches(") in my Object names.

A Mac forum in 2005 suggested OSX might mistake a "." for unix, and so Tinkertool was recommended to find hidden files; done, to no avail. Disk Utility made some repairs, and the G5 sounds more relaxed now, but still no custom parts. The project is under construction and I am building from a LIVE MODEL, and while I have project file backups, no custom library back-up in this rare case. This is a fluke I hadn't imagined. The saving of a library part overwriting a folder --if that happened-- of a completely different name, taking out all its contents is very scary stuff. Time machine, indeed. I want in.

I am hoping there are sleuths that can retrieve from the void.

Thanks again,
Doug

[Anonymous]

Thomas:

One concession from the heavens --and I'm a guy foraging for hope-- is that in a copy of the project file, I'm able to globally freeze all live sections (and there are many), and so extract drawings that document the elevational dimensions of my custom parts, for building. Whew. And I did have some dead drawings. Alternately, I can reference or re-create the lost parts from my boneyard of reclined elements from whence they were created, that by design remain on my "library parts" layer.

Re-drawing is one thing; having to re-design is another, and was my fear, but because of Archicad's 2D memory of the custom parts, I won't have to do. Still, I'm heeding your warnings and will be launching a time machine soon.

Doug
~presently relieved

[Thomas Holm]

Douglas wrote:
...Still, I'm heeding your warnings and will be launching a time machine soon.

Highly recommended!
I'd recommend an upgrade too, of both the Archicad and the machine. But that's your business.

You might want to Google for other search apps than Spotlight, too. Spotlight excludes some folders/directories from its searches, if you haven't enabled them. Depends on where you stored these parts.

Also, some disk utilities might be able to recover deleted files. Even if the files look deleted, the Finder might have written the new file/folder to some other physical location on the disk, and just marked the old ones as deleted in its directory. If so, some utility might be able to recover them.
But I don't know any specifics of this. Good luck to you!

[ztaskai]

Hi Doug,

I think I know what happened but I can't help you with getting your files back:(

I guess you accidentally chose the same name for your custom object as the name of the folder - maybe ArchiCAD even assisted you on that. And AC9 and MacOS10.5 magically overwrote your folder with a single file.

(Moderately) Good news is that I cannot reproduce this phenomenon with AC12 on a PPC. I hope even the possibility of such events is eliminated with the newer versions of ArchiCAD.

Best regards,
Zsolt