Edit: specifying SharkCAD Pro v12 build 1592
I've encountered the damage notification dozens of times in the recent 2 years. I don't think it was crash- or power failure-related.
Also, I've had GUI crashes on dragging the Gripper, no matter a fresh file being under 50 kb in size or all the way up to 190mb saved/2 GB RAM sizing. I don't think those are related to the corruption "damaged at location..." events.
My current machine is an Acer Victus gaming laptop with 48 GB of RAM.
The disk is a 512 GB SSD (now down to about 120 GB after 2 years of countless Save-As).
Graphics: NVDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 4 Gb.
CPU: Intel Core i7-12650H
I'm using SharkCAD version 12, and updated to it around October 2022, from SharkFX v9.
For some reason, if I activate the Navigator, it jiggles, and then locks up SharkCAD. I reported it in Oct 2022. No response [[No remediation/patch/fix, not "no response", as, IIRC, the company may have replied.]]. So, I have to always carefully avoid activating it by mouse or by menu or by accelerator keys. Recently, I hit it twice, but managed to within 3 seconds dismiss it. If I let it run longer, I can lose the session and the open file work effort.
The computer is NEVER online, and it is not connected to any kind of LAN — at least none of my creation.
(((Well, technically, I download files to the computer via media cards, and sometimes via my mobile, most of the time it being off air, in airplane mode. I don't let others use it, and noone has any implied permission or right to even turn on or peruse the machine. I don't think anyone other than the manufacturer would have had intimate access to the current machine, and that would have been before I bought it. It is at the at-sales-date Windows 11 release, which is before Oct 2022. To reiterate, updating or not updating is not the issue since the machine-OS-pair is never put online.)))
So, I don't suspect any virus or work [[worm, not work]] or trojan activity. It's either SharkCAD or the computer. Occasionally, I see a pop-up that seems to be trying to call home. It could be the printer, or Windows. It's so fast there's never any time to see what it is. Even if I disable the printer resources, it pops up, but I still suspect the printer.
Infection date indeterminate...
That is, until I go back far enough and determine which of two suspected files is the first damage event, I right now can't recall the post-2022 "damaged at location..." first happening exact date.
(((More of it had been happening after Oct 2022, but, I on occasion had "damaged at location" issues even on V9, between 2019-2022, if I recall correctly. Those were on a different machine, far less RAM. But, then, SharkFX was in Win 7 in VirtualBox. While Linux on that machine would be online occasionally, the VBox machines were deliberately not alllowed any real bridges or connections, as far as I can recall.)))
I have no idea how or exactly when the corruption or "damaged at position..." going on post 2022 started. It's possible the "DAL" came from a file from the previous machine.
(((It was traumatizing because I'd been doing Save As for DAYS, possibly WEEKS with no hint of corruption until I one day imported pieces of the file into another, but by chance had a crash or some other reason to close SharkCAD and reopen it and the file. It was an arduous, demoralizing, enraging task to one by one crawl back weeks into files until I found a non-damage-reporting version.)))
It's a strange, insidious, sobering thing to have happen. I hardly talked about it because I'm not fully yet interested in handing over some of my files because I had saved them with layer names containing ideas or intents for things that if read by people faster and smarter than I am could 'beat me to the, er, um, punch' with my own ideas.
Carriers of infection of some kind...
So far, what I do know that I am able to work with damaged files that are what I'm now regarding as "carriers". That is, they save fine until or unless I import said file into a known-good, clean file. That is, further, the "carrier" files behave even after opened, edited, saved, Shark is closed and reopened, and the file reopened.
Size of either one doesn't matter...
Exporting or truncating the bad file to some small, select geometry (in order to transfer layer structure into a new working file) will also infect or DNA-destroy the new hosting or working file. Something damaging is "traveling" into the export regardless of older version chosen, and any save-as.
Also, even if I open the damaged file and reduce the geometry to just wires/sticks, and re-export that to any file version, no joy.
The only way I can bring into a new file the contents of a "carrier" file is to open both files in the same instance of SharkCAD, then shift-tab away between copies-and-pastes, arduously manually recreating each and every of many dozens of layer names to get the geometry in a hierarchial position.
Restated, the DAL thing doesn't happen with copy-and-paste. It's caused (in my observations) when geometry from a carrier file is actually imported. Compacting, breaking links, even deleting all layers and geometry don't stop the infector from traveling via Import. Exporting the file no matter what deltion/compacting I do helps. Import a damaged file and do a save, it's gsme over. Only a close/exit without saving is the last chance to not damage a working file.
For now, as for ~"file damaged at position..." trauma mitigation, I do Save-As 5-10x a session, and occasionally close shark and reopen the file while session edits are still fresh in my mind. Test the file before moving ahead.
To be honest, at least 2 of the damage incidents did force me to break with what I was drawing, didn't like, and couldn't bring myself to break from. Falling back to a saved version hours prior was in that case hours of sitting and thinking with maybe 20 minutes of actual mouse and keyboard work.
The damage, as far as I can tell, doesn't seem linked to long-session, jiggly-stuck geometry crashing of the GUI. On Dec 4, I wrote but didn't post my observations and workarounds to dealing with the GUI crash that looks like 125% text and GUI elements expansion, loss of access to the GUI, and the extreme temptation to do Save-As on the GUI. I did that, got burned badly, and went back to the late 90s for a trick I used in database/other apps:
— Quickly get to a file manager
— Make a copy of the current session file that's misbehaving, and give it an unambiguous name
— Do a Ctrl-S at that time.
However, that trick will work ONLY if you have not taken Shark into file Save As at the moment you sense the GUI is going crazy. Once the sub-dialogue elements are on screen, so much visual noise is present that it often is not possible to ESC out of it.
Often, with modal dialogs open, it's now impossible to even grab the app's header/title bar to drag it around in any attempt to whirl it until the graphic card refreshes on screen. It can work with some apps, depending on which version of Windows and what graphics card is in the machine.
Also, in multi-head setups, you might find that you can grab any open file managers and move to a third screen (I have a three-headed setup) to refresh the file manager so you can copy the current-session file before doing Save-As on it.
My three-headed set-up:
— 29" display at top
— 2x 22" displays sitting side-by-side below
29" is connected to the laptop's HDMI [[[not DVI]]] port
2x 22" displays connected to Micro SD port-type Targus adapter.
Shark and other apps live on the 27" display, and I Alt-Tab as needed.
The lower left display has some immediate-need reference drawings and some file managers.
The lower right display has the SharkCAD tool pallets.
I have 3 screens because I become incredibly stressed trying to draw and open or switch to reference files. Even two screens are not enough. I could do 5 or 7 since my laptop supports that, but I don't have an ergonomic enough amount of desk space. Three-headed with my screen sizes worked well enough so far.
Regarding the pallet.pos file and others... Back those up regularly. It is infuriating when I open a session only to 2 minutes later say, "Something's off...", and it's the custom tool pallets gone, needing to be recreated.
That's as infuriating as the "Show Points" setting never, ever, EVER remaining set across sessions. I get intensely infuriated when I create a curve, rotate the model, and can't find the curve because the top/left/right view may be perpendicular to the curev and so I feel like Shark and ViaCAD keep trying to train/force me to manually turn back on each session. It feels like torture.
Another thing: if your session is hours-open, and you KNOW you've got (like me) more than 3,000 layers (maybe 1,000 are organizng or parent layers containing only sub layers and no actual geometry at their root level), and lots of solids and associative geometry...
Save-As regularly before doing an Undo. Ive let some Undo ops have longer than 18 hours and still nothing undid, forcing be to toss minutes or hours of work that hadn't had a Save-As.
Edited by user Saturday, December 14, 2024 8:21:37 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Edit: specifying SharkCAD Pro v12 build 1592; [[No remediation/patch/fix, not "no response"
