Working on a larger home in Wings3d and still in the stage of trying to figure out where I want the doors, or at least how to provide three rooms access to a single bathroom without having to go through half the house.  Um, well, okay, that's not as difficult as I'd imagined, and it seemed to be about what I wanted.  Until I hit ctrl-s to save it.  Hmm. Through some blessing of windows or maybe the Elvis elves on the moon, not only did it not save it and refuse to do so, it took it on itself to see that not only was my saved verson gone, I mean gone, but all the autosave was gone along with it.  NIce, empty folder.  Shut down, start again, hoping maybe it was still there but some glitch wasn't letting windows see it.  Nope, empty folder yet.  Three days work wiped out in a tenth of a second.

Aren't computers wonderful?

Doric the very PO'ed.

I've had that happen with Wings. It makes me swear a lot.

I don't even know what it is that triggers it, but Wings screams, the whole thing goes down and there's nothing left (not even a save). It's maddening, but it does happen.

Laurie

     I hear you, brother.  In my case it was a lightning strike which got past a 95lb surge/battery protector and killed my main modeling computer during the time when I had several projects building for the FaerieWylde Christmas event.  I had to just get up and walk away, because the frustration and anger might have otherwise resulted in throwing gear out the window.

     I ordered a HD dock, and I'm going to attempt to recover whatever I can.  But I understand your frustration when umpteen hours of work just sashays off without so much as a "By your leave".

If you stored your real-time work in the cloud, all the previous versions would still be there, from every save. Just sayin.

Dropbox is free.

If you're worried about somebody seeing your files and stealing your intellectual property, then use Dropbox + Viivo. (I am the architect of Viivo) Viivo encrypts your stuff so that even the FBI can't read it no matter who they subpoena. You save to a Viivo folder (or any subfolder of that) instead of the Dropbox folder, but otherwise it works the same.

Quote - If you stored your real-time work in the cloud, all the previous versions would still be there, from every save. Just sayin.

 

I have, on line, exactly one, the cheapest box I could buy.  My working computers are not allowed to know the web exists, and never will be.

The cloud is something like a RL cloud to me.  As a glider pilot, manitain 500 feet in all directions from any cloud. The virtual "cloud", one should maintain strict non communications with.

Doric.

I've had some versions of Wings roll over and die at some models but when I load 'em into an older version, they work just dandy.

Still, it's a free app and it (usually) does what I want.

I don't use the Cloud.  My work box ain't networked.  Like Doric's, it's not going to be.  

Quote - I've had some versions of Wings roll over and die at some models but when I load 'em into an older version, they work just dandy.

Using 1.41 right now, but thinking reverting to 1.2 isn't a bad idea.  Tried inporting a .dxf from TurboCad, forget that.  Cad programs aren't too fussy what they tie together or how they do it. 

Rethinking this project now, I may end up with something looking nothing like my original idea. 

El Cheapo floor plan designer works pretty well, until you want to export that and import into Wings, then the above mentioned "not too fussy" enters in again.  Oh, well, same company made them both.

Original ideas were created to be scrapped.

Doric.

You might try Sweet Home 3D...at least to draw the walls and holes for the windows ;). The rest you can drop in in Wings if ya want to.

As far as Wings goes, I still prefer 1.3.1 over 1.4.1. Seems to have the right balance of tools with less overly wonky behavior. Plus it doesn't have the auto select (which frankly, drives me mad).

Laurie

Quote - You might try Sweet Home 3D...at least to draw the walls and holes for the windows ;). The rest you can drop in in Wings if ya want to.

Over the years I've built a pretty respectable library of CAD "symbols", which is the same as saying things like doorways, doors, windows, once they're drawn in the cad, then they become a "symbol", meaning cut a hole and drop it in, done. 

It doesn't export them any better. Dammit!  I suppose I probably should start making the same thing for wings, but it's a lot of work.

Doric.

It may be too late, but in future, if the files actually were there, one of the free undelete utilities may bring some success. I'm assuming that Wingz simply deleted them for some reason and didn't do some of secure file wiping for some weird reason. Of course, you have to stop writing to that folder and prfereably to that drive immediately to avoid overwriting what could be recovered. One of the file sync utilities may be able to automatically copy saved files to a different folder/drive. Maybe something to look at if Wings has a habit of going t**s up like that.

Recuva

Problem being it did it when I told it to save.  Might be there, but not working like I wanted anyhow, so maybe not so much of a loss. 

Rethink in progress.

Doric.

If it's any consolation, you can import your own models (like doors, windows, etc) into Sweet Home 3D and use them there. I'm in the process of building a two story house ;). There will invariably be some cleanup involved tho when you import them into another program.

Laurie

Downloaded it, I'll take a look tomorrow, Laurie.  Too late to do even what I'm doing now.

Doric.

Hmmm.  First a crash, now the windows repair thing.  Nothing else changed, windows just lost it's mind again.  "Windows cannot automatically repair", and then restart and it's running again.  It repaired something.  Oh, well, the blessings of micro$oft. 

Aren't computers wonderful? 

Almost as good as my Bruning drafting machine and an architects scale.

Doric.

Reason # 10237 why I won't use Windows any longer unless otherwise forced to do so.

--

One thing I've learned when it comes to making architectural mesh, though... draw out a quickie floor plan on paper (yep, with a pencil).

Start with big (but faint!) circles representing areas - living room, bedrooms, etc. move 'em around a bit until you find a comfy layout. Then, start roughing out the rooms from there. You'll get a good feel for whether or not it'll fit... once you get that down, then the fun begins - making it all look good. :)

Quote - If you stored your real-time work in the cloud, all the previous versions would still be there, from every save. Just sayin.

 

If I had my stuff stored in the cloud, I wouldn't have had anything for the better part of yesterday and today... storm took out my phone line.

You don't seem to understand how cloud storage works with sync.

With dropbox, google drive, sky drive, box.net, (I use all of them) you still have everything local. What is happening in the background is every time you touch a file or folder, it (the sync tool you installed) is quietly and quickly copying the changes to your area of the cloud. (And backed up)

If you lose your connection, then you're exactly able to access everything as before, because the cloud connection is not involved in what you have. It's involved in what you don't have. Backups - transfers.

If you connect other computers or devices to your account, they receive those changes as soon as they appear in your cloud copy. So all your files stay in sync. If you have 3 computers hooked up, there are 4 copies of everything current - locally on each computer plus one in the cloud. As well, there are backup copies of every file that existed in each previous state it existed in in the cloud, which you can go get if you want to.

If your computer dies, you buy a new one, hook it up, and it re-syncs all your stuff so you have it local again.

Cloud storage is storage, i.e. data at rest, not data in use. The data in use is another copy that you keep locally and it never leaves your computer. It's always there whether you're connected or not.

If you have multiple cloud providers (as I do) you cannot ever lose your work - it's nearly impossible. Only a total national disaster as well as the destruction of all six of my computers would do it.

I have a external harddrive and a flash card but if there's a fire .
You need ya stuff stored else where.

from time to time I burn a CD keep it else where.

The clouds sound good thou ,half to look in to that.

BB, that argument may be fine, except, like many do, you're assuming my computers are connected.  Sorry, but no, they aren't and won't be. 

So, let's start with what I'd have to do.  LIke, first, network adaptors, unless you want to use the on board one, which I don't.  TImes three, "Ka-ching!"  Then a router, "Ka-ching!"  Which also means something plugged in and on twenty four and seven.  "Ka-ching!"  Some kind of security software, now times four, and I'm getting tired of hearing cash registers "Ka-ching!"  If I don't want to be drilling holes all over the house to run wires through, that would mean wireless adaptors, and the "Ka-ching!" would be louder. 

To what end?  Storing a bunch of Crap that I'm probably going to wipe out everything but the final version?  Which may be free now, until they get you hooked on it, then "Oops!  Sorry, but here be a bill that if you don't pay, we wipe out everything." 

Corporations do not exist for the benefit of the customers, they exist for the benefit of their own accounts.  They exist to take the maximum amount of money from you and try to make you feel like they're doing you a service. 

I don't really like having to start over from scratch, but in this case, it was probably a forced restart on something that was getting to be a nightmare anyhow.  Not a problem that I'd be willing to spend the kind of bucks to have something I don't really need to keep it from happening again.

The "Kiss" principle has to be factored in.  Unlike a lot of software "solutions", "Kiss" works.

Doric.

Well, if it makes you feel better, I'm currently watching a DBA run my work laptop over webex while we t-shoot a cranky e-commerce site install... did I mention that I have the best IT director on the planet right now? dude backed me up on pushing the deadline, no sweat.

meanwhile, I gotta figure out how many sacrifical kittens are needed to get this #$@!&()%$^^! ORacle instance to behave itself.