Unable to read selected axm file
Hi Troy,
Thanks for posting, and for providing access to the model.
The FormIt development team may be able to open/recover this file, and get it back to you in working order. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, is there anything you can tell us about what happened before you saved the model last? Did you import anything into the model, or use any specific tools that you recall? Any errors that you saw before saving?
Regards,
Josh Goldstein
Senior Product Manager
Hi Troy,
I'm really sorry, but the FormIt team could not open this file either, despite many attempts and tests.
This seems to have been saved to A360. Can you check to see if older versions of the file might open from there? Here's a screenshot showing where to access old versions:
Let us know if you can recall any commands you used, any data you imported, or any errors you may have seen before saving the file the last time. We'd love to know how to prevent this in the future.
Thanks,
Josh Goldstein
Senior Product Manager
Sorry to hear you might have lost data Troy.
Our team is not sure how this happened, and this certainly is not intended behavior. I can't give you any steps to avoid next time, since we don't know what steps were taken to cause this. But if we can figure those steps out, we'd put out a fix asap so it couldn't happen in the future.
Can you tell me:
- Were you working and saving exclusively to A360 the whole time? Is that where the file became corrupt?
- Were you using FormIt for Web, Windows, iOS?
- Did you import anything before the file was saved previously? Did you see any errors before the file was saved previously?
A360 Drive should create a new version every time you save to the Drive. Perhaps you saved to A360 Drive once, then went a couple of weeks saving *locally*, then saved back to A360, creating only a couple of versions available online?
Personally, I save my files with a new date-based name every day. Like, "20170103 house massing.axm." That way, I can always revisit an older design version and grab pieces I may have deleted or changed and want to revert, and it also helps prevent catastrophic data loss in cases like yours. You could try something like this, and delete versions older than "x" days to ensure it doesn't eat up too much drive space. It's a bit more management, but this method has saved me from losing work (with different software and for different reasons) in the past.
Josh Goldstein
Senior Product Manager
Hi all,
We agree losing work is unacceptable. We'd like to get to the bottom of this. In the mean time, consider saving locally as a backup until we can isolate the problem.
What we've seen with other reports is that the FormIt file is not completely saved to A360 Drive. When FormIt tries to open the file, it finds incomplete data that cannot be properly loaded. In fact, we've seen files missing nearly half of their expected file size. This could be due to a drop in connectivity or other interference that A360 Drive is not handling gracefully.
Reproducing the problem is critical to our ability to fix it, so we need everyone's help in answering some questions:
- Are there steps you can describe to try and reproduce the problem? Does it happen with some files and not others?
- Is the internet connection slow or unstable? WiFi or hardwired connection? Does the problem happen on one network and not others? Also, VPN or other modifications unique to your setup are worth mentioning.
- When this happens, do you see a message at the top of the screen indicating the file was successfully saved to A360 Drive, or any other message in FormIt?
- When this happens, can you successfully save the file locally? If so, we'd like to look at the file.
- Which platform are you saving from? Web / Windows / iOS
Thanks for any information you can provide.
Josh Goldstein
Senior Product Manager