[esp-r] Re: recovery options for when you overwrite files....

[Jon Hand]

The comment.....

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 The problem showed up finally when I got the message indicating outdated file-formats, proposing to re-build the files from the constructions db - where these constructions did not exist any more.

is a reminder to keep backup copies of your model as you progress so that if you overwrite something
you have a chance to get it back.  All operating systems provide options for creating archival files. On
Windows there are zip files (typically right click on the folder) and on Linux OSX there is tar as well as
gzip.  

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Subject: Re: [esp-r] Outdated zone-files and missing constructions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