Reports stop saving over time

[SingularitY]

I've recently ran into an issue where our machines will stop sending reports to the network after roughly a week. Programs that report fine with no changes seemingly just stop reporting. Once this happens, no program will save reports. Everything else works fine. Text files are opened, create, and written to, stats are sent, and scripts execute fine but the .pdfs will not work. I can manually save the report from the report window to the same network location fine when this happens. If I restart the computer, reporting will work again. As a temporary fix, we restart our computers once a day. I have an SMA but Hexagon hasn't helped much. We are running 2017 R2 on both windows 10 and 7. We have 5 CMMs and 4 of them this happens to. I do not use the print report menu, rather I use the code inside the program which hasn't changed since I started. I feel like I can't be the only person who has ran I to this. Our IT dept swears it isn't an issue on their end but we have a sister company who I gave all of my code to and they haven't ran into any issues so I'd assume it isn't code related. Anyone have some insight?
As always, I appreciate all the help. If you need me to post code, I will be able to first thing in the morning.

[SingularitY]

I should also add, no error messages or popups occur. The program completes as if everything worked fine. It just doesn't save the report.

[AndersI]

Are the PDFs the only thing you save on the network? Is PC-DMIS running continously, only restarted when there is a problem? Does it always work after a PC-DMIS restart, or do you need to reboot the computer, too?

Two things comes to mind:

- all Windows program is leaking resources, finally some resource is too scarce and weird things happen (usually some kind of crash)
- sometimes the network disconnects/reconnects the network drives (policy updates?), causing problems for a program that has a file open at that moment. I can observe this in our network, with MS Word for example - if I leave a document open in Word over lunch, there's a high probability that I can't Save when I come back, only Save as... a new name.

[SingularitY]

It's only a .pdf issue. PC-DMIS saves a few different text files and it also saves a copy of the finished program to the network so the run data can be accessed later. All of this works fine.
We run PC-DMIS continuously in operator mode. Our machines run pretty much 24/7 and after roughly 4 to 7 days, they stop saving .pdfs. Restarting the computer once fixes the problem every time. I will check to see if restarting PC-DMIS instead of the computer will also fix the issue and I will update you here.

[AndersI]

Ok, that sounds like the traditional "Out of Windows Resources" problem. Our usual recommendation through the years has been "Restart PC-DMIS at each shift start, or at least once a day". In automated cell systems we have a controlling program that queries the Windows resource usage, and restarts PC-DMIS when resources get low...

[SingularitY]

So basically there is nothing I can do except restart Pc-DMIS or the computer?
I will continue doing this because it seems to help. Thanks for the help.

[AndersI]

Restarting PC-DMIS usually suffices, no need to spend time waiting for the computer to restart (at least with Win 7 and later).

[Schlag]

I am assuming that you do some type of cleaning weekly ? Probe tips , and the ways for the air bearings at least ? More than enough time to do a computer reboot while you get the alcohol rag out isnt there ? Everything needs a re-boot on occasion.

[Kp61dude!]

Have you tried to print locally? If problems dissipate then I would look into networking issues OR If symptoms persist then it's not the network. That's usually how I test these issues 9 out of 10 times it's our network/ user rights / IT / etc...

[louisd]

If the output is written in code (not the default report window output), you can use FILE/MOVE command at end of your routine to take it from local drive to network drive. That way, if the issue is network related, you still have all the PDF's saved locally.

ASSIGN/T_PATH="T:\MEASURLINK_TRANSFER\CMM CM-002\FILE.PDF"
ASSIGN/C_TEMP="C:\PRODUCTION\C_TRANSFER\FILE.PDF"
FILE/MOVE,C_TEMP,T_PATH

[SingularitY]

I can do this testing but it would probably be a little bit before I can let you know whether the testing has fixed/diagnosed the issue. I would have to update all of our programs with the new code which would take about a week if I had nothing else to do. I like the idea of moving the report to the network. This would mimic what we do for stats and would be a safe way of doing it. Thanks for the advice everyone!

[Kp61dude!]

Subroutines are great for times like these. You can put your print command in a subroutine.

[SingularitY]

I never thought of that. That's a great idea Kp61dude!

[Kp61dude!]

Once all your programs are pointing to the same sub all you have to do is edit your command once inside your sub instead of all your part programs.

[SingularitY]

Will all variables carry over from part program to sub? Sub to part program?