Archicad 29 is unusable due to Teamwork errors. Please review a measure to provide a partial refund

[Lee KiSeong]

Archicad 29 is unusable due to Teamwork errors. Please review a measure to provide a partial refund of the Archicad 29 subscription fee.

Hello.

This is the first time in 14 years I have had such a terrible experience.

The client computers are Macs. The server is Windows 11.

The time servers are all identical, set to time.apple.com. (I even attempted to unify the time on the Windows server using the UTC method, but it was of no use.)

The error shown in the image below appears 3 to 4 times a day, causing about 30 minutes to an hour of work to vanish each time. I am suffering significant financial loss.

I converted from a perpetual license to a subscription and prepaid for 3 years.

The exact same issue occurs in SaaS as well. Only in version 29!

Graphisoft has completely failed with version 29.

What is even more despairing is that I have seen many reports of similar issues to mine in the community.

Yet, Graphisoft has absolutely no idea what the cause is.

I received a response telling me to clear the cache files and test again.

If the cache files are the problem, then why does version 28 work perfectly fine without issues?

Please take a look at what I have gone through over the past 2-3 days.

[Lee Hankins]

Ok, it was just advice that importing PDF files and jpegs and keeping their live links can cause projects to take a long time to open, throw up synchronisation errors and be generally slow especially if this files are stored locally rather than on BIMcloud. 

It would be worth saving the files out and re-sharing manually to 29 to see if it works and enables you to use the software. We had to do that to some files but most migrated. The teamwork file database is complex and can become corrupt especially when migrating older projects from version to version. There are so many ways Archicad can be used with so many options such as custom objects and add-ons that sometimes issues occur that Graphisoft could not foresee. 

As I say, I appreciate there are some users having similar issues but we have had very few issues opening projects in 29 that were from 28 either standard or Teamwork. If we do have issues with Teamwork files, we just re-share them. It’s good practice to anyway to clear out any potential database corruption. 

[schagemann]

Yes that is us glad you like it.

[schagemann]

The 2GB size was our recommended target size 3 years ago.

In our exsperience since AC27 file sizes for similar sized projects and documentation efforts have actually exploded, we now see files on average around 6+ GB - as per my other posts something seems not quite right in GS development / coding land.

[schagemann]

Glad to hear AC28 works better for you.

I may have missed this and it may not make any difference, but just out of interest what library type did you use in AC29 - LIBPACKS or the older type LCFs., or a mix of both?

[Lee KiSeong]

I initially tried using a mix of libraries, which caused errors. I then tried loading only LIBPACKS, but the error occurred again.

Of course, since I was testing with a template we've used for several years, there were likely references to older libraries lingering in a 'Missing' state when I only loaded the LIBPACKS.

I am planning to replace all our computers with Apple Silicon models in the first half of 2026 and create a brand-new template built entirely from scratch in AC29. If I encounter errors even then, no one will be able to stop my rage.

[schagemann]

My best guess without looking at your actual files would be a mix of external references (possibly file paths) and library formats causing your issues... anyway before you upgrade, you may want to have a look at our apple hardware recommendations:

https://smart.macinteract.com/hardware-recommendations/

[Joe_Paetzel]

Hi there, I know I'm late to this party, but we've been dealing with this error for the last month plus now. We are a small 5 person office. It started in AC 28 with it just affecting 1 user very occasionally on 1 specific project. 

After we upgraded the office to AC 29, and we are on BimServer Basic, it started spreading. It got to the point that we would all get hit two to three times per day. I found a thread on the forums from 2022 I think it was that discussed this error and the users said they had luck turning on full reporting, and checking Interrupt with errors in the Work Environment > Model Rebuild Options settings. 

We did that and spent an hour chasing down objects with errors. We went from everyone multiple times per day having the error to one person once every few days. So not perfect, not fixed, but we can at least work.

I have to say I am extremely disappointed in Graphisoft Support. We pay for the SSA/PLUS/FORWARD whatever the rebrand of the year is, subscription for premium support, but were told that as we are using BimServer Basic, there is no support offered. To hear that this is an issue  with SSA as well makes me very uncomfortable. 

[Joe_Paetzel]

Oh, I forgot to say, you can also go into Project Info and open the report window to see what is causing the errors in a report format so you don't have to take notes from the error windows. 

Then depending on what the error gives you, you can probably track down your problem items either with their ID or their UNIQE ID, then use Find and Select to grab it. For us, one of the big ones was the AC windows not liking having a transparent pen in the 2D settings. 

[Barry Kelly]

---

@Joe_Paetzel wrote:

For us, one of the big ones was the AC windows not liking having a transparent pen in the 2D settings. 

---

Sorry, but how is this a problem with teamwork error messages, which is what this post is about?

Just set the correct pen in the 2D settings.

If it is not a teamwork error message and you are still having trouble fixing it, please start a new post.

Barry.

[Joe_Paetzel]

Hi Barry - 

You wouldn't think modeling errors would have anything to do with teamwork errors, but fixing the modeling errors was the only thing that we've been able to do in our month long troubleshooting session that has done anything to alleviate this horrific Teamwork issue.

I know I have next to no posts, but I have been an ArchiCAD user since version 5 I think it was. I appreciate your work as a moderator, but this is on topic, even though it may not appear to be. 

Also, you are absolutely correct that once we knew the AC windows didn't like that they were defaulting to a transparent pen in the 2D settings, changing the pen in the 2D setting was the way to correct it. 

There was another AC window Macro object that needed the GDL edited, which meant extracting it out of the libpack, then extracting the LCF, editing the macro.gdl, repackaging, reloading the libpack to our BimServer. So it will depend on what error you are getting with what libraries you are using. 

Again, this isn't a fix, for us it alleviated the symptom of the Teamwork error enough that we are able to work where we aren't all constantly losing work all day.