Learning Forum

[bharathgkashyap]

Hello,

We have seen a error while opening saved HFSS files (post completion of simulations). Please refer to the attached document for error details. This error causes all the results and designs to disappear from the file. The files would have been stored for days/months before this error appears.

 

We can salvage the designs by creating a copy of the whole HFSS file, but not the simulation results. The only option that we have when this happens is to rerun the simulations and which can take days/weeks to complete. We have had 7 separate occurrences in the last six months. 

We first assumed this could be due to a disk related issue as the first few instances were isolated to one external hard drive. So, we moved all the files to a network drive. But even after that, we have seen the occurrence of the same error. Unfortunately, it has also been random and we have not noticed any particular trend. 

Could you please help us with determining the root cause of this problem? Thank you.

[VivekKamble]

Hi As Ansys employees, we are not able to download any attachments from the community. 
Please use the 'Insert Image' option to embed images describing errors directly into your post.
Thank you

[bharathgkashyap]

Hi Vivek,

Thanks for getting back to me. Here are the error details.

When a HFSS file (simulated and saved) is reopened the following pop up appears.

Correspondingly, the message manager window displays the following message.

Upon clicking ‘OK’ in the first pop-up, the following final pop-up appears.

The designs and the results are lost as a consequence. 

[AndyJP]

Oh! I had similar issue 10 years ago in HFSS13. still not fixed, huh

[VivekKamble]

Hi, 

Please make sure you have .aedb and .aedteresult folders. If .aedb folder is not present in the project directory, the model will get corrupted and will be unable to open.

Another way to save the project with results is you can always save an archive file. 

After simulation 

Go to file> Archive 

So, next time when you open an archive file (Restore Archive) the results will be there.

I hope this will help. 

 

Regards,

[bharathgkashyap]

Hi,

I see the .aedtresults folder, but not the .aedb folder. Do they get stored in separate places? I could not find it anywhere in the computer. Also, I do not see .aedb folder for any of the other design files that have not been corrupted. So, would you say that there is a chance for those to get corrupted as well?

[VivekKamble]

Hi, 

If you have used any other tool in project such as Circut design, this folder(.aedb) is mostly created.  

 

No, the other files will not corrupt if you have .aedtresults folder, you can archive the file if you want to store the result.

I hope this will help. 

 

Regards,

[bharathgkashyap]

Thanks for the information. We have not used circuit design tools. So, we were not aware of .aedb folder. 

We will archive the results going forward. 

However, here is something that is weird. We have never archived the results historically and had not come across this issue till about 6 months ago. 

Also within the whole group, we should have more than 1000 design files and archiving every one now would be a herculean task. At the same time, our concern is that opening them might lead to the same error.

So, what could be the reason for this?

[Michael Griesi]

Hi Bharath,

Not all projects have associated .aedb folders. However, 3D Layout designs would also create this database, like a Circuit design. So, whether a project has an associated database just depends on what is contained within the project. Archives offer a way to keep track of all the information required for a project in a single compressed file.

If you need to archive many projects, you could use scripting. A generic script for archiving is attached. You could add some additional Python code to parse through folders (e.g. import os) and automatically archive all the projects in a folder. You could add some exception handling for any projects that won't open. Any that did not open could be diagnosed and opened using alternative methods (such as removing the edb path reference in the project folder).

[bharathgkashyap]

Hi Michael,

We tried implementing the suggested solution of archiving the results. However, this is not very convenient as the archive file takes up more than half the space as compared to the original results folder. (For e.g. The size of the results folder (.aedtresults) for 1 design file is 133 GB and the archive file size is 64 GB!). Since we will have more and more files in the future, this might not be a viable option.

Also, as I mentioned before, we have not seen this problem until about six months ago. And we have never archived the results in the past. So, it would be greatly helpful if you could help us figure out the reason behind this error.