Project Management - Disaster Recovery

[old man emu]

Last night I designed an object for printing using Rhino 5. At the end of the job, I saved the drawing as an stl file and closed Rhino. After some further thought about the object today, I decided that I needed to make a minor alteration to the drawing. However the only thing I've got is the finished drawing. I tried loading the stl file, then saving as a .3dm file, then loading the 3dm file to make the alteration, but that did not resolve the problem. Now I'll just have to accept what I have (I don't want to waste time redrawing the whole thing) and hope that the raft layers in the printing will do what I wanted to do.

The situation leads me to pose this question:

When engaged in a project where objects are being created from an idea, what are the steps one should always take to establish a "fall-back position". In other words, what are the tasks involved in meeting the need for Disaster Recovery in the project?

Old Man Emu

[3dkarma]

Two things: 1) always save in and start from the native file format of your preferred design software and 2) version management. Developers use github for a reason; designers should do the same.

[bford903]

I save copies of the 3dm files (Matrix user) as I go it so when the job is done I have anywhere from 20 files to 150 files acting as a timeline of the project. That way if the customer has a revision or a change of heart, I can go back to an earlier version and make my revisions. Revisions are pretty common with custom jewelry.

If you're using Rhino, have you tried the MeshToNurbs command? Not a guaranteed fix but sometimes it works for lower resolution objects.

[old man emu]

If you're using Rhino, have you tried the MeshToNurbs command? Not a guaranteed fix but sometimes it works for lower resolution objects.

That did the job. Thanks!

OME

[Roxy]

Two things: 1) always save in and start from the native file format of your preferred design software and 2) version management. Developers use github for a reason; designers should do the same.

Two Things:

1) If it hurts, don't do it...
2) Always back up your work...

[Geoff]

Last night I designed an object for printing using Rhino 5. At the end of the job, I saved the drawing as an stl file and closed Rhino. After some further thought about the object today, I decided that I needed to make a minor alteration to the drawing. However the only thing I've got is the finished drawing. I tried loading the stl file, then saving as a .3dm file, then loading the 3dm file to make the alteration, but that did not resolve the problem. Now I'll just have to accept what I have (I don't want to waste time redrawing the whole thing) and hope that the raft layers in the printing will do what I wanted to do.

The situation leads me to pose this question:

When engaged in a project where objects are being created from an idea, what are the steps one should always take to establish a "fall-back position". In other words, what are the tasks involved in meeting the need for Disaster Recovery in the project?

Old Man Emu

For collaboration, the cloud mate! dropbox, google drive... Sugarsync... I use alot of different utilities for alot of different projects and really the only way I can work effectively with people overseas is the cloud, especially repositories because they let you keep revision history, so old files dont get deleted they get revised and you can always go back to an old revision. The best part too, doesn't matter which PC you are on, you are always in the loop.

[LambdaFF]

Working for an aircraft manufacturer, I can tell you that Configuration management is a real job ! What I do is I usually have up to 15 different files until I am satisfied of the end result at which point I do some database cleaning.


Keeping aside from the collaboration aspects, I don't know Rhino but the DS 3d modellers I am familiar with have a "construction tree" in the native file that allow you to modify any step in the past without cancelling the steps coming afterwards. This, however, is obviously not in STL format and also requires some familiarity with the tool to make designs robust enough to bear heavy changes.

[bford903]

That did the job. Thanks!

OME

Glad I could help.