Materials settings

Hi Guys,

My hard drive failed on me the other day and unfortunately everything with it is lost.
I was lucky enough to have backed up all my kitchen plans on cloud but all my material settings that I've spent the last year creating are gone.
I have Articad back up and running and my IT guy spent the day yesterday trying to salvage any files from the drive but has had no luck.
If I could ask could anyone to share some material settings for doors, worktops, floors etc I would really appreciate it.

I would really encourage if you are not already doing so of backing everything up so that you don't end up in the same situation as me. 


Cheers
Dave

Dave - Sorry to hear this, what an absolute nightmare. Daz actually posted some really helpful settings last week you can use to get you going again: heres the link:

https://kbbcadguru.forumotion.com/t161-a-few-basic-material-settings-for-you-to-try-out

Thanks Jane, I'll try those

Oh Dave.  I feel for you.  Been there a couple of times in the past.  We're looking in to creating a new Dropbox for some of these settings.  Obviously it won't be personal to you but with have a decent set of standard above that of what Articad has 'out of the box'.

Sorry to hear Dave....
It is one area that a lot of software could improve on... 

Favourites, materials, plans, page layouts and not forgetting the installers and build updates (especially if you are not in "support") are all in different places and some are hard to find for the general user of the software.

I don't really save many predefined materials to the the list but one way to get it filled up with the ones you have used is to open the plans where you used them and save them there. Better than starting from scratch.

Gosh...That's a pain. I always remember to back up....Just after a system crash or a hard drive failure. On the up side, it could have been worse and now you'll probably get a whizzy SSD rather than a physical drive. Once used, you'll kick yourself for not having done it sooner. No more making a cup of tea while the system boots up!

When I first got Articad i was able to go in to settings and through plans directory change the file location to save on the cloud. 
Its a pity that this couldn't be done for all the relevant file settings that we use everyday and be synchronised to the cloud.

I just save the whole directory to my Dropbox account and run it from there rather than my C drive.

Does it slow it down doing that Minch?

No, not at all.  Although Dropbox is a cloud based service it still uses the hard drive to store everything.  So you could run Dropbox on your C drive . . .for instance C:\Dropbox\Articad and that way it works just like normal but is available to other PC's you might be running elsewhere if they are synced.  If then you happen to lose the hardrive they will be synced with other PC's and/or on the cloud of which they have backups regularly.  Works like a dream for me :-)

I run my whole business on Dropbox and use TeamViewer extensively too.

That's a great idea Minch and I would ensure never lose anything again.
Would I have to uninstall Articad again and save to a different file directory or can I just transfer files over?

That's probably one for Daz.  You should be able to just grab the directory and copy the complete folder over however I'm not sure about how it references any catalogues so it might need to be reinstalled properly.  I have a C drive for Windows 10 and the basics and then run everything else from a larger D drive (SSD).

When you install new catalogues it always (like any Window program) defaults to installing to the C drive so you just need to point it towards the Dropbox folder instead.

That's where i put it by default, hindsight would have been great and i could have put it in the one drive directory.
Hopefully Daz will have a way I can change it now without having to uninstall it again.

The great thing is that if you use another PC elsewhere and have enough storage on the hard drive to sync it all you can then use the same licence (HASP ID) and use Articad on another PC without a physical dongle or another licence.  Obviously only one can be on at any one time but it means its all running from the same folder so you even get your favourites too 

Hi all,

I've wondered about this before ( but not yet tried it) maybe use an external hard drive all the time rather that the software, files etc are on the PC (that's as technical as I can go:)) 

Would that still work as efficiently or would there be reasons not to do that?

Dave Gannon wrote:That's where i put it by default, hindsight would have been great and i could have put it in the one drive directory.
Hopefully Daz will have a way I can change it now without having to uninstall it again.

Best way is to try it Dave...Copy the ArtiCAD folder and paste it in the new directory. Then once this has been copied over delete the original so it drops into your recycle bin (not a permanent delete just in case it does not work). Deleting the original before using the new location will make sure that the new locale ArtiCAD is not still looking at it.
You will have to alter any shortcuts and icons but these are easy to do.

Nearly all ArtiCAD defaults file references look inside the ArtiCAD folder apart from the Favourites as I remember (personal user files).

Fingers Crossed...

Chris A wrote:Hi all,

I've wondered about this before ( but not yet tried it) maybe use an external hard drive all the time rather that the software, files etc are on the PC (that's as technical as I can go:)) 

Would that still work as efficiently or would there be reasons not to do that?

About 6-7 years ago I setup ArtiCAD to access a server via LAN. It enabled everyone on the network to access the same Plans folder so we could access each others drawings.
I did try making it so when selecting Textures it was also to the server.... it was a bit to slow for this then... but now with the improvements in computers it is probably not an issue.

If you want to use an external drive though I think it is still better to use the shortest fastest path possible via the computers on-board drives....

Thanks for that Darrel 

Thanks Daz, I'll try that in the morning