This section of the Knucklehead's Guide will probably never be finished. This section is intended to be a collection of issues that commonly confuse users. If you have an issue that you think should be included here, drop me an e-mail.
One small step that seems to be commonly overlooked when Setting up a Project in Project Manager, is to forget to set the Project Directory. Later, (after working another another project, the user comes back to a previous project and cannot find where the working alignments or runs have gone.
Setting the Project Directory is easily done by using the pulldowns on the Project Manager dialog, Directory > Current Working Directory as shown below:
One problem that has plagued users when first using Project Manager and Typical Section Generator, is how to save all their changes to the default redefinable variables contained within the Proposed Cross Section run.
For example...Normally, the 9 cut/fill slope tables are always modified from the default values. You take your time and painfully enter all the slope ratios and cut/fill heights, specifically for your project, only to lose them (somehow) when a new run is created.
The reason that the modified values for the redefinable variables seem to get lost (or overwritten) is because each time that the Apply button is pressed, (shown below), on the Typical Sections dialog, the default values for all the redefinable variables are re-applied to your run and all of your painful meticulous work gets overwritten.
Each time you execute your run, using the pulldowns from the Proposed Cross Sections dialog, File > Run an input file is created, that contains all the values of all the redefinable variables . The name of this input file is pxsprj.inp. Each subsequent time the Run pulldown is accessed, this input file get overwritten with the redefinable variables values currently set in the current run.
So... two things are happening here:
- When the Apply button is pressed, the default redefinable variables populate the run. At this point, the input file has not changed from your initial run and all of your values are still contained in the input file. The run has new values, but the input file is still in tact.
- When you access the Run pulldown from the Proposed Cross Sections dialog, that input file is overwritten, thus losing all of your modified redefinable variables values.
If you know you are going to modify the run, by re-applying the Typical and accessing the Run pulldown and you don't want to have to retype all of your redefinable variables over again in the new run... save the old (existing) input file pxsprj.inp as another name before accessing the Run pulldown. Open the renamed input file and copy (and paste) the redefinable variable values into your run before executing the new run.
Let's take a closer look at this and see if it works:
Below is a screen capture of the run before re-applying the typical and accessing the Run pulldown.
Notice that there are 3 redefinable variable slope ratio values for CutSlope1:
Below is a screen capture of the input file that was created after accessing the Run pulldown. Rename this input file to something else, before it gets overwritten when you re-apply the Typical and execute the run. I'll rename it to my_pxsprj.inp.
Notice the same 3 redefinable variable slope ratio values for CutSlope1:
Next, I open the same proposed cross section run and re-apply the Typical, thus re-populating the redefinable variables with the default values:
Notice the default redefinable variable slope ratio values for CutSlope1 are back:
Open the (renamed) input file that contains the modified redefinable variables. Highlight the syntax to copy and right click on Copy, as shown below:
Back in Project Manager, highlight the syntax to replace (the default redefinable variable value) and right click on Paste, as shown below:
This will have to done for each redefinable variable that you want to salvage from the (renamed) input file.
When finished, use the Proposed Cross Sections dialog pulldowns Files > Save Settings.
The run now has the same redefinable variables as before.
NOTE: Bottom line here with this tip... is if you have a run that has many many hours of manual input of redefinable variables, it's a good idea to make a copy of the pxsprj.inp file and save it as a different name. This way your painful work can always at least be copied and pasted into another run, somewhere down the road.... pun intended!
More coming later............
