[esp-r] Re: Outdated zone-files and missing constructions

[Jon Hand]

Related to ESP-r on OSX - 11.11 is well beyond ancient.  We have sorted out some
problematic C code that was causing faults in OSX 8 and OSX 9.  I have successfully
compiled and run on these, however the patches have not yet been introduced
into the standard repository.  If you want a source code base that does compile
on more recent OSX contact me and I can send instructions for how to get it.

There is not facility within ESP-r to move constructions between databases.  Experts
will, of course, open up a text editor and copy and paste and tweak the headers
and ensure that all the referenced materials have also been dealt with. 

Regards, Jon Hand
________________________________________
From: Lars O. Grobe [grobe at gmx.net]
Sent: 10 April 2015 10:10
To: Jon Hand
Subject: Re: [esp-r] Outdated zone-files and missing constructions

Hi Jon,

thank you for your reply with all that information. I could finally understand what has happened (well, what I had done without knowing...).

> One more issue:  "I have a file .constrdb in my model directory, however I cannot select it from project managar (which allows me to choose only from ../)."
>
> The usual pattern is to place local .constrdb files in the model ../dbs folder. Does your model have a dbs folder?

I have a simple model, with a flat structure where all files are in folder (all ./).

> Try this - start the project manager from within the model cfg folder and see if you get an option to
> identify the construction database file in the ../dbs folder.  If all else fails you can use a text editor
> to alter the line of the model cfg file which holds the name of the constructions database.

I could load the constrdb-file, but it was empty. At that point I realized what happened. In the db maintenance menu, if I select the constructions db, there is a menu item "create new constructions". I must have clicked that, assuming that it would lead to a dialogue to create a new construction. Instead, what this does, is obviously creating a new (empty) constructions file, overwriting the existing one. I did not realize this immediately, as the information was still within the .con files of each zone. The problem showed up finally when I got the message indicating outdated file-formats, proposing to re-build the files from the constructions db - where these constructions did not exist any more.

> What version of ESP-r are you using and on what kind of computer and operating system?

I had initially set up the model on OS X using a version 11.11 from the repository. However, esp-r seams to be not really stable on the Mac at the moment (this would be another thread), so I continued working on a Linux installation (version 12.0).

> So your model has surfaces with attributes of construction which are not
> found in the current constructions database.  Are these constructions that
> you defined? Perhaps you need to use a different construction database?

I had those constructions in the .constrdb-file. What I was wondering was, is there any way to write back information from the .con-files into an empty .constrdb-file? It seamed that most information was there, but I could not sync backwards from the .con-file to the database to restore what I had deleted.

Related to this, I also found no way to move data between databases. E.g. I would like to import one construction from one construction database into my model construction database - is there any way to do so?

For now, I redefined the constructions. The model is just a simple room, three wall-types, one floor, one roof, one window, one door. So not too much effort to solve the problem, however I wanted to learn from that.

Cheers, Lars.