an unknown error occured whilst accessing an unnamed file error message

[PaulGrimes2282]

Whilst saving i often get the message (and it's becoming more regular) "an unknown error occured whilst accessing an unnamed file"... useful.

It then means that i cannot save my model anywhere, and although it still runs fine and works ok, I cannot save anything so it is entirely useless.

Anyone else come across this?!

[Artur.Kosakowski · Accepted solution]

In case you opened the file from a network location you have to make sure you have this location accessible all the time you are working with this file in Robot. If this cannot be secured copy the file on your local drive first and then open it in Robot for edition. After finishing the job you can copy it back to its original (network) location.

The solution for the situation you described is to select all structure (Ctrl+A), copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C), start new model (File> New Project), and paste it from the clipboard (Ctrl+V)

If you find your post answered press the Accept as Solution button please. This will help other users to find solutions much faster. Thank you.

[PaulGrimes2282]

thanks! must be that my network is getting dodgier then. I will transfer to my hard drive before i start working on a model.

Any chance a more useful error message could be included in a future update?!

[PatrickEC]

I also love the error handling in Revit Link, the error messages are similarly descriptive.

[Artur.Kosakowski]

In most cases it is easy to detect that something is wrong yet for many situations it not that easy to tell why. I understand that the message like 'dear Robot user why have you unplugged your network cable?' would be much better but Robot itself does not check the network connectivity yet

The request for having the detection of such situation followed by the display of the corresponding warning is on the wish list for Robot.

[PatrickEC]

Anyone who knows anything about software development will know that contrary to what Artur wrote, it is not a big deal to make this error message more informative and replace:

"an unknown error occurred whilst accessing an unnamed file"

with:

"Project file <name>.rtd could not be found at <path>." or

"Cannot save file: please check the write permissions." or something to similar depending on the exact nature of the error.

Interestingly I never see "unknown errors" in Revit, I wonder why...

[PatrickEC]

Another example, in Revit Link when you start exporting and manually close the Robot window, the error message says "uknown error occured", I find it hard to believe that it is so difficult to detect if Robot is still running or not and if it threw an error.

The bottom line is: I would rather see the Robot team working on removing bugs and working on more meaningful error messages than telling users that complaining about seeing "unknown" errors is unrealistic.