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All it takes is one bad bit - the importance
of FileFixer.
By Ivan Pena, Vice President for
Marketing
A long time ago, in a design firm not too far away, toiled
away a lonely designer. After laboring for days on this one
submittal, he checks his watch "11:23pm", sighs
and closes his MicroStation. The next morning, he comes in
to work hoping to pick up where he left off and be done with
this revision. His boss greets him on the way to his desk
with a stern, "Tom, I expect that revision to be done
today." Tom smiles and reassures his boss that the deadline
will be met. Tom double-clicks on the "B" icon on
his desktop and selects the file he was working on the night
before. Then, it happened. "Unable to open design file".
"The file is unopenable!" Tom panics. He thinks
about the last backup. "It's three days old." There
is no way Tom can get the project submitted on time. Or, is
there?
Years of experience are what allow Axiom to provide "miracle"
solutions to common workflow problems. The situations handled
by Axiom tools are not MicroStation shortcomings. The purpose
of Axiom tools is to optimize MicroStation and enhance the
user experience. Repair of design file corruption is an example
of this.
Corruption happens. It is due more to bad luck than lack
of skill or a faulty CAD application. It is due to electrical
anomalies in your hard drive, your network and your power
company. It could even be due to a janitor vacuuming too close
to your CPU! In fact, lots of times corruption is out of the
end-user's hands. The only thing we can all hope for is that
when we come to work, the project design files will open smoothly
and we will be able to work uninterrupted by corruption. But,
sometimes, things happen.
Design file corruption parallels genetic mutations. One glitch
in the design can change the color of a person's hair from
black to blonde. In the case of design files, one flipped
bit (fundamental unit of information having just two possible
values, as either of the binary digits 0 or 1) can lead to:
a file not being readable, an element disappearing, a range
being incorrect, or in V8, a model being unselectable.
FileFixer repairs most totally corrupt MicroStation
files automatically. Also, FileFixer helps prevent
future MicroStation file catastrophes and helps you figure
out what is wrong when MicroStation isn't working the way
you expect by repairing minor, unnoticeable MicroStation file
corruptions before they become serious. No similar curative
or preventive solution exists for MicroStation. FileFixer
is, and will continue to be, the unrivaled champion against
design file corruption.
How does Axiom stay ahead in the battle against design file
corruption? Broadly speaking there are two ways we do this:
1) Lots of research and development and 2) listening to you
- our MicroStation managers and users.
FileFixer enhancements
Most enhancements made to FileFixer are requested by
our customers. They usually come about from specific, real-world
problems MicroStation users are having with design files.
For example, because of a specific problem an Axiom customer
once had, the latest FileFixer for V8 release includes
the ability to create a backup copy of a design file prior
to processing while leaving the modification time and date
the same as it was prior to creating the backup copy.
Another customer had the interesting problem of mysterious
invisible elements in his design files. MicroStation V8 has
a feature that allows elements to be set as "invisible".
These invisible elements are neither displayed in MicroStation's
GUI nor plotted. But, when the customer viewed his design
files though Cimmetry's AutoVue DGN reader, the invisible
elements were displayed, which was confusing to our customer.
To handle his problem, we have added a new FileFixer
error number (240) and included the option to correct these
invisible elements by either making them visible or deleting
them.
FileFixer now does the job faster than ever too! Recent
programming enhancements have resulted in optimizations that
have vastly increased processing speed when finding and fixing
corruption. Test cases have shown that the most recent release
of FileFixer repairs corruption, on average, five times
faster than the previous version.
Conclusion
The internal complexity of the workings of a design file are
quite staggering. Maintaining their delicate balance is truly
a scientific marvel. FileFixer gives MicroStation users
a tried-and-true solution with over a decade of refinements
that help preserve the reliability of their invaluable design
files. Much like modern science, FileFixer is constantly
revamped to meet the new and changing demands of its users,
and will continue to grow and evolve as long as Bentley marches
forward enhancing MicroStation.
Call now!
For more information on FileFixer
contact an Axiom MicroStation Consultant today! Call 727-442-7774
extension 9281 or e-mail 9281@axiomint.com.
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