Learning Forum

[jecircen]

Hello,

I'm working on a silent installer for Zemax OpticStudio, but I'm running into issues with network drives. OpticStudio is supposed to create a "Zemax" folder in a user's "Documents" folder at the first launch, however the systems that I will be installing on use a network drive for user accounts (mapped as U: at log on). On first launch, OpticStudio seems to handle this properly and displays the message below.

However, after this message the following error messages are displayed.

After clicking "OK" on these, the software launches but then displays the error messages below.

During this process, a folder named "Zemax" is automatically created on the user's network drive. However, any subsequent launches of the software display the same error messages except for the "Zemax\OBJECTS\Grid Files\STOP Files" error message.

After this, if the "Data" folder location is manually selected using the "OpticStudio Preferences" in the "setup" tab, then the folders seem to be created correctly and there are no error messages while creating files or during subsequent launches. Comparing the files in the manually selected "Data" folder and the folder automatically created on first launch there are significantly fewer files located in the automatically created "Zemax" folder.

Contents of the automatically created "Zemax" folder.

Contents of the manually selected "Zemax" folder.

Is there a specific way to handle network drives for OpticStudio or some way to configure the default folder locations either through the command line or by using parameters for the .exe installer? Any information that might be helpful is greatly appreciated.

[Don Dickinson]

Hello! 

Network drives with \\ in the name seem to be read to OpticStudio strangely so can cause these sorts of errors. The "DATA" location is automatically determined from the user's "Documents" location when starting OpticStudio the first time. There is no option to set it during installation, only via the settings after starting the program, sorry.

 

[jecircen]

Thanks for the information, I was able to find a solution for the problems that I was running into by having a script edit the registry key for the root folder location. I noticed that when I manually selected a folder in the network drive that it would use the full UNC path but the automatic folder would just reference U:. This seems to have fixed all of the issues, but I will keep testing to see if there are any further issues or workarounds.