Where have all my toolpaths gone?

[Taildragger]

Every once in a while I open a SW parts file only to discover that my HSMWorks Jobs and Toolpaths created in previous sessions no longer appear under the CAMManager tab.  AAAAhhhhhh!!!!  It's as if all my prior HSMWorks programming somehow got corrupted and lost forever.  Today, it happened again, but instead of starting over from scratch, I contacted my reseller, NexGenCAM, and got some awesome customer service (as usual). 

Apparently, if you launch SW by double clicking the parts file, this problem is known to occur in rare instances.  The problem is insidious because it happens so infrequently, it cannot be duplicated "at will".

The workaround solution is to ALWAYS first launch Solidworks.exe, and to then open the part (or assembly) files FROM WITHIN SOLIDWORKS.  I guess SW needs to first establish itself before it can recognize HSMWorks data reliably. 

If you ever forget to do this, and the problem happens to you...  Just close the file without saving, launch solidworks.exe, and then open your file from within SW.  Your jobs and toolpaths should reappear. 

Thank you very much, Keith Clausen!!

[keith.clausen]

Thx Mike! 🙂

[keith.clausen]

Ticket #6589 has been created for this issue.

[Taildragger]

...Ok.  Here's some information about my setup that might help bracket the problem:

Dell M6600 laptop
Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit
16 Gb RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 3000M

Solidworks Premium 2013, 64-bit, SP 3.0

The problem occurred after upgrading
FROM: HSMWorks2013-R2.34091-x64.exe
TO: HSMWorks2013-R3.34664-x64.exe
(I suspect that the problem is correlated to upgrading to new versions, but not 100% sure.) 

[fonsecr]

FYI We have located the problem and it is unrelated to your HSMWorks updates. SolidWorks unexpectedly marks the loaded file hidden. We'll make a workaround for it.

[Anonymous]

Have you found the Solution to this problem??

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

This should no longer occur.

What SolidWorks and HSMWorks versions are you using?

[Anonymous]

Latest version of HSM and Solidworks 2016

--
Thanks,
Pieter Johnston

NexGenCAM
Phone: 888-310-2674 Ext. 208

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Latest version of HSM and Solidworks 2016

--
Thanks,
Pieter Johnston

NexGenCAM
Phone: 888-310-2674 Ext. 208

---

HSMWorks2016-R3.41050 or HSMWorks2016-R3.41038?

Solidworks SP3.0?

Is this with parts or assemblies?

Anyway you can shoot a video?

[ntaliaferro]

Hello, I am having the same issue..  Made a revision to an existing part yesterday. Came i nearly to post some code and there are no Jobs or operations in the file.   I have tried all sorts of order of operations for loading the file.   Is there any other tricks?   

Why does HSM seem so buggy?  

HSMWorks 2016 R3.40968
SolidWorks 2016 x64 SP3.0

Lenovo Workstation 

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

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@ntaliaferro wrote:

Hello, I am having the same issue..  Made a revision to an existing part yesterday. Came i nearly to post some code and there are no Jobs or operations in the file.   I have tried all sorts of order of operations for loading the file.   Is there any other tricks?   

Why does HSM seem so buggy?  

HSMWorks 2016 R3.40968
SolidWorks 2016 x64 SP3.0

Lenovo Workstation 

---

Have you read the thread? This is not really a HSM problem but a SolidWorks one.

Updating both should solve the problem for 2014 Solidworks users.

Currently it's probably that the CAM tree is collapsed. 

[pwest_12]

I'm having the same issue today.  Using SW Premium 2016 x64 SP4.0 and HSMxpress 2016 R2.40513. 

Generated all my tool paths yesterday on a part.  Reading the previous posts, today I opened Solidworks, then file > open, then went to the PDM vault and opened the file from there.  The part opens but is missing all the tool paths I had made yesterday.  Now, the part was modified by someone else late yesterday, but it was only a minor hole modification, 99% of the part is still the same.   Again, today, I open the part and the tool paths, plus the job folder are all gone. 

Editing my reply:  Figured out a work around, but this situation has happened before with me and it seems to others as well.  Anyway, I went to the file in the PDM vault, right clicked and selected history.  I selected the version that I knew was good, and saved it to my desktop.  Went to the desktop, and renamed the file and added a .sldprt extension to it.  I then opened that part, and right clicked and copied the tool paths.  I went to the latest version part, made new job folders and then pasted the tool paths into them.  All in all this works, but a workaround should not be needed. 

[Viking73]

Just happened to me as well. Lost everything on a reload.  Ticket has been submitted to Autodesk.   I sure hope this gets fixed.

SW 2017x64 SP4.1

HSM 2018 R2.42099

[Laurens-3DTechDraw]

Good thing to try first is to reboot windows. Open SolidWorks and from within there open the file.

If that doesn't work close solidworks and open the file from the explorer and see if that helps.

[pwest_12]

Rebooting the PC makes no difference.  I haven't had the problem with lost tool paths lately though.  Kind of forgotten about it until I got an email this morning. 

In order to open a file from explorer, I always have to attempt to open it twice.  Double click the first time on the file, I get the message "There was a problem sending the command to the program."  X out the message window and then re-double click the file, and it will start Solidworks and then show the file.  I just deal with it. 

[sevenfive85]

I just lost all my tool path right after I did a "Get Latest Version" from SOLIDWORKS PDM.  Has anyone else experience this problem?

[vernonkleinsasser]

i have been having the save problem. did anyone find a fix for this?

[Anonymous]

There hasn't been an update to fix any of this Vernon.  This has happened to me again just this week, but was able to again, go into PDM and bring up an older version and copy the toolpaths from the old part and paste them into the new.  Sometime what is really stupid, is that the only difference between old and new could be something as simple as another hole or even a chamfer or an edit to the engraved serial number.  Kapow!!! all the info from before is now gone!!!  Luckily, we have PDM and history capability, most people don't. 

[nick]

This has been happening A LOT lately. The only way I have been able to recover toolpaths is to restore a backed up file and copy them over to the latest version. 

Any updates or fixes for this? 

[lenny_1962]

sound to me your company has to get together and work out a better practice of using PDMWorks.

The only way you can make sure that your toolpaths are always there is to stick the part in an assembly that is just for machining and put the part into that, that way the toolpaths are in the assembly not the part file.

What can be done is that you only have rights to the PDM folder where the CAM assembly files exist.

There are more pluses to machining in the assembly than just that, you can add fixtures, sketches to the assemble that are not in the part file plus the part file never grows in size do to the CAM, sketches configurations etc.

and yes I have been told before that we don't want to make more files.

I do all my machining in an assembly.