BIMcloud warnings are getting out of control

[Patrick M]

here is a small sampling of the t/w warnings I have been trouble shooting the past week. This feels like something is broken... or theres something else at play here (my tinfoil hat is on pretty tight right now). And these are about 1/4-1/2 of what I've been sent:

 

  

  

  

 

[torben_wadlinger]

Thanks for sharing. We had these issues too (not in this scale but, but the "usual" 'can't send-issue') but by tweaking out network and changing the power management on our vm's worked.

We have ESXI 7 running virtual Mac's (cough), 10 GBit but we are moving our Mac-based BIMCloud's to virtual WIN10-PRO-Server. Every BIMCloud-Version has it's own vm. Our experience this far with Windows as BIMCloud-Server is, that you must turn off any power management and any update-service to prevent Windows from doing ugly things. The Macs are running rock solid but because there is a end of life for intel-macOS we have to switch to WIN.

Just an idea: take an old pc, install proxmox as hypervisor (because there is no free ESXI anymore) and run a test with virtual Windows hosting bimcloud. Maybee Windows Server is the problem by intercepting the network traffic.

[jamesMorris]

Unfortunately this is an old issue. 

I first contacted support mid 2023 about that. 

February 2024 I had enough and opened this german forum post: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Teamwork-BIMcloud/Es-ist-ein-Fehler-w%C3%A4hrend-der-letzten-Tea...

We tried everything (IPv4, IPv6, bare metal, DNS instead of IP, new PCs, BIOS) and were not able to hunt down the issue. We spent hours on the phone with IDC (Support Switzerland), we send many bug reports and emails back and forth. Graphisoft Support could also not identify the issue.

We haven't had the error now for over 4 months. So maybe we solved it? There is simply no way to tell, since we never identified the issue. But here is what we changed since the last error:

- All Intel CPUs have the newest BIOS Update installed

- BimCloud updated to version 2024.3

- Removed all BimClouds and only kept the 28 and 27

I know this probably does not help you much, but at least you know you are not crazy. It is Graphisoft unwilling or unable to hunt down this issue. 

[Patrick M]

ok graphisoft. here is your daily update...  if you simply can not resolve this and BIMcloud and BIMcloud Basic are going to be plagued with this indefinitely, just have the decency to let us know. Otherwise, I will continue to post the error messages I'm sent daily.

[jamesMorris]

Interesting that the same error also applies to macOS users. Quick questions:

- Are you really using ArchiCAD 26 5002 on macOS 11.5.2 like you write in your signature?

- On what machine are you running BimCloud Basic?

- Did you contact support? What did they tell you?

[Patrick M]

no, I just haven't updated my signature in... a couple years?
there are several clients (I am working as an independent consultant, drafter, modeler, trainer, template builder, etc.) with different configurations. These warnings pop up even with the full Graphisoft hosted BIMcloud. Other clients range from VPN portals to local servers running on PC servers with RAID partitions (configuraiton and set up WAY above my pay grade) to mac mini's to old iMacs to brand new M3 macs.
I have reached out to resellers, local tech support, and even contacts at GS. 
...
as for reliability of these issues happening. Here I am at 2:00 on a  Monday, and I need to track this one down to try to avoid losing more work.

[Patrick M]

Here's todays selection... The interesting thing about the second one, it can be recreated on another computer. It happens whenever a section marker is placed within a specific location. Deleting that marker frees it up. If someone ELSE places a section marker, they get the warning, but the first person no longer will. 
something about the model geometry, or viewpoint reservation... maybe a clone folder reserved by someone else?

  

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Thanks for your deep diving on this. This happens to us as well and we just shrug our shoulders. I appreciate your determination and share your frustration completely.

[Laszlo Nagy]

@Patrick M,

What did your local reseller say about this issues?

[jamesMorris]

Hey @Laszlo Nagy  

I know you did not ask me, but I still like to share what my local reseller IDC.ch told me. 

I was told to send in many things. Which I totally get, you need stuff to work with.

Even unsolicited sent Wireshark logs. Never became feedback if they even read wireshark logs. 

We don't have this issue often. Sometimes it will work for many months.

So my local support told me to write down a journal. 

BUT, there is a big catch. 

Every time a new Bimserver or ArchiCAD update came out, they looked at it as a new case. 

Basically "Sure you had that problem noted in your journal, but that was on ArchiCAD 27.1! We are now on 27.2! These two cases are not related at all and something completely different".

The problem with that approach and me not having the issue very often, resulted in me opening a new ticket every quarter, jump trough lots of hoops, just so that in the end I get the feedback "Graphisoft Budapest was not able to find a problem".

Just to be clear, I don't blame IDC for that. They are just the poor first level support. 

I blame IDC and or Graphisoft for not even be willing to open up a direct line of communication with developers.
That has to be a pain for both of them, IDC having to basically play a relay station for me and Graphisoft for never being able to talk to me directly. 

[jamesMorris]

I felt that they ran out of ideas. So instead of escalating the issue and try to hunt down the issue, they tried to shift the blame to me or just bore and drown me with new requests. Unfortunately for them, I am pretty stubborn 🙂

I made a good decision in the past. 

Since that BimServer is the single most important tool, I made the setup as simple as possible.

No VM, no Cloud, no VPN, nothing! No layers of added complexity!

Just a plain old bare metal installation on a local network (even tried all options: IPv4, IPv6, DNS).

That made it very difficult for them to shift the blame to me.