M4 Layout File Issues?

Dave R · 16 Sept 2012, 22:27

So out of curiosity, would you send me one of your LayOut files? I will try to open it here and see if I have any problems. I promise I won't share it with anyone.

Lemoyne Architect · 16 Sept 2012, 23:10

Unfortunately, the ones I'm having issues with are all on current projects. Wish I had something on a past project or sample I could send, but I haven't been able to recreate the problem in a new file - partially because I haven't tried to recreate a 15-page Layout file with a dozen SketchUp model files and such just for testing purposes...

Lemoyne Architect · 2 Oct 2012, 02:34

I'm sorry. I thought I had posted another followup to this thread.

I was able to send a reduced file in to SketchUp to see if they could find out what was going on. I sent in three pages of the file to illustrate the issues that I was having with it.

They replied, saying that the file itself was corrupted. Apparently they are aware of this issue, but it does not happen frequently so they are having some difficulty finding a fix for it. They did give me some suggestions on a workaround involving changing the layer state from "on every page" and back to "on single page." Unfortunately, this wouldn't work for me as I had several pages with different information on each page on that layer - using that workaround would have consolidated all of the information from each page and put it on every page.

However, I was able to duplicate the page that I was experiencing problems with, delete the original page, and then rename the new page back to the original name. That seemed to solve the problem, although I had tried that before and it did not work.

I also have no idea if the corruption was prior to the update to M4 and M4 just brought it out, or if M4 was somehow responsible for the corruption.

In any case, I was able to salvage my file and continue working on it.

When I had uninstalled SketchUp per their instructions, instead of deleting the files I saved a copy of everything - just in case. I've actually reinstalled the old files rather than having to go through all the setup procedures for my plugins and other add-ons. I'm glad I did so. As far as I can tell, there is no difference in operation between the reinstallation and the initial update to M4 now that the corrupt file is fixed.

xpiperx · 3 Apr 2013, 21:38

I'm having the same issue for a while now.
It's been a couple of months,i haven't been using layout too much, I didn't bother.

Now that I need it, it's irritating.
Nothing SAVES right.
Every single file I save ends up corrupted, i don't even have to close, if i save it as another name, and open it, it's all white squares.
If i save it as a template, it's all white squares too.

I tried the "repair" tool. Still saves wrong.
I uninstalled the whole thing and installed it over again. Still saves wrong.

And it's EVERY file, if i start from scratch, still saves the same way.

Dave R · 3 Apr 2013, 21:42

Any chance you'd like to share things like your operating system and which version of LO you are using? Maybe post one of your corrupted LO files?

xpiperx · 27 May 2013, 17:50

Damn, i hadn't checked back here all this time.
My Layout has been open for two days now since i'm working on something, and if i close it, it will get messed up.
I'm running Windows 7, my layout version i believe is the latest, since i haven't got any update messages lately. (Is there a way of seeing update versions?)
i'll be posting a file as soon as i figure out how to do it.

xpiperx · 27 May 2013, 17:54

ok, this is it:
http://www.filedropper.com/messedupfile
mind you, it's not a complex file at all, this happens to everything.
Also, when i see the thumbnail before opening it, it shows as it was.

Also, do you know if there's any other software that allows me to copy+paste the information that's on the Layout pages? Because that's would be so nice.

marcdurant · 28 May 2013, 13:58

Hi Piper-

It sounds like you're running into a problem that LayOut 3 has on computers where the decimal separator character is set to a comma instead of a period. The bug is that when LayOut saves a file, it starts using commas instead of periods, and then gets confused when it tries to read the file back in. This will manifest itself as text boxes and model views that collapse into a single line (among other problems).

For example, from the file you posted, I see this line in the xml:
<e:rectangleBase height="1,169292" width="0,8267701" x="2,755906" y="5,129921">
but for LayOut to work properly it should be this instead:
<e:rectangleBase height="1.169292" width="0.8267701" x="2.755906" y="5.129921">

There is some good news, though! The workaround for LayOut 3 is to go into Windows Control Panel and change your "decimal separator" character to be a period. Also, we believe that this bug has been fixed in LayOut 2013 although it's still a bit early to know for sure.

Thanks,
Marc

xpiperx · 28 May 2013, 15:57

Holy Crap, I think that worked: opened a new file, put a bunch of squares, saved, closed, opened it. And it opened just as it was.
I just have to try with bigger files now, but i think that did solved it. Is there any way of fixing already saved files? Or just opening them? Can i change the codes?

marcdurant · 28 May 2013, 17:48

I'm glad that worked! Unfortunately we don't have a good way to fix files that already have this problem. The trick is that some of the commas in the LayOut file are necessary, so it's not as easy as just replacing all commas with periods. Do you have a significant number of files in this state?

xpiperx · 28 May 2013, 21:21

pretty much everything i worked on for the past four months.
I had already given up fixing it, and just used for simple stuff, that i could do in one sit, saved everything as a pdf file. There was no way of changing it after.
Sad thing is that i had a big one already halfway done, that was lost.
But thank you so much, Marc!

Krisidious · 29 May 2013, 01:05

If you're using the SU 2013 version then Mac must be updated to 10.7... and XP to SP3.

Have you done this?

xpiperx · 29 May 2013, 15:44

Ok, so i'm having other problems now.

I open Layout, works fine. I zoom in, select a few lines, change their width to .1
Then i think it's wrong, try to change it to .5. It doesn't input my .5. And now it doesn't zoom out. Also, all the keyboard shortcuts stop working. WTF?

xpiperx · 29 May 2013, 16:04

Just to see if those bugs were because of the comma config, i put commas back. And those zoom and keyboard problems disappear. Problem: if i save it with commas, it will mess up the whole thing. Now i'm configuring back to points everytime i save it.
That's so very strange.

You see, my local configuration is a comma, because we use commas instead of points. While my Windows is in Portuguese, my Sketchup is in English (The translation is so rubish, it pisses me off). Do you think if i change my sketchup language to portuguese, those problems will disappear?