Unspecified error generating panel file

DHawthorne

I just created a new project for the sole purpose of generating a touch panel using the Khaki template as a starting point for a system upgrade from an old Axcent project to a NetLinx. The salesperson for the project really likes the Khaki design and wanted to use it for this job.

Not surprisingly, most of the system devices weren't in the VA database. SInce I have no intention of using the generated code anyway, this was not a problem. I substituted the closest devices that did exist, just so the appropriate screens would be included in my panel. I connected everything as required, and tried to generate the files. The NetLinx code (which I am just going to toss) generated without error, but it would not create the panel file. The only notification I got at all was "The operation failed."

I cannot begin to describe how utterly frustrating it is to have such a useless error message. I have no idea where to even begin trying to fix it. I have been reluctant to use VA at all because I see no benefit from it, and I dislike being locked into it's design assumtions - I thought at least I could save some time in creating a new panel design from scratch, but apparently it's useless even for that. Right now, I am more than unhappy with this product, and to satisfy my sales team and this customer, I now have to figure out a way to duplicate this panel design manually. Nope, I'm not happy at all ...

DHawthorne

OK, I'm going to back off of the above rant a little bit. I got it to work by restarting my computer. I remembered having the exact same trouble with Panel Designer, and that was the solution; apparently, there is a shared issue in the panel generation routines. Most likely it's a memory leak. I didn't think to check memory use before and after the failed generation, but it works after a restart even with all the same programs running on my computer as when it failed. Something is getting messed up in the project creation phase of things that prevents a panel file from being generated. I can close and re-open VA as much as I like without fixing the problem. But if I restart my computer, then re-open the project, the panel will generate.

By the way, I can edit my project without the problem coming back. Apparently, it only occurs on creation of a new project. I don't have time to try to nail it down any better than that this morning though ...

[Deleted User]

A tip if you ever need to simply generate touch panel or keypad files without going through the entire System File Generation process: for touch panels, choose 'Generate TPDesign4 Project' from the 'Touch Panel' menu or toolbar; and for keypads, choose 'Generate KeypadBuilder Project' from the 'Keypad' menu or toolbar. These will allow you to output the project for the touch panel or keypad whose view tab is active, and will save you from having to go through code generation, etc.