Running programs over network?

[[Mi...]]

This may be more of a Zeiss direct question but...

Does anybody store and run programs from a network location? I've been advised not to but I'm curious about any real world examples.

In many cases we have the same program on multiple CMMs, with the part fixtured the same way. So when changes happen, we have to either modify each program on each CMM, or modify one and copy it to the other locations. Both seem like a waste...and inevitably with 30+ CMMs, mistakes happen, machines get missed.

All our CMMs are connected to a central network, the pros to having the programs saved to a single network location are obvious... but what are the negatives?

Can more than one machine access the same program at a time?
What if there is a connection interruption while a program is running? Or is the entire program saved on the local machine's memory while its active?

[[No...]]

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Yes, Sir!

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We do it for about 13 years now and I have to think hard about any downsides. In the past there were some rare occasions where Calypso took quite long to load (itself or programs), but that hasn't happened in a long time.

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In principle it should be able to, but I have no experience in doing so and personally wouldn't recommend it, Programs are completely loaded into memory as far as I know, but I find it too risky to run the same one on multiple machines. We have only 3 machines, but keep each one's programs seperated.

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The program is in RAM, but network interruptions would have consequences nonetheless. Think of external PCM scripts or other data to be read from or written to the measurement plan directory. Somebody at Zeiss said once, don't put result folders on the network. I don't know if he was right, but ours are local. We have a quite stable network with very few outages, so I can't complain much 😉

[[Dy...]]

So we have 3 machines that were running the programs off a network. but because of issues i have swapped them back to local now. Due to living in Florida and having a lot of power outages the network even on a back up would have a time delay so programs would throw errors at the end of runs since they couldn't save the reports "which were also saved on the network" they will keep running once opened though. you can open the program on multiple machines that's not an issue just be sure to close out of them on other machines if you saving for obvious reasons. If power outages aren't much of an issue and the network doesn't trip up a lot having them on there would be fine, i also save the reports on the local drive and use notepad with (xcopy) .bat file to transfer files to the network with 1 click hope that helps! 😃

[[Mi...]]

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So your biggest issue was just the results files, not actually the running of programs?

It sounds like you're confirming what Norbert was saying, running programs over the network is fine, but the results files should be saved locally.

[[La...]]

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What about the geoactuals folder? If you're running the program from the network, on multiple machines at the same time - you will have them fighting over the geoactuals folder, no?

[[Dy...]]

Yup! 😃 and load up time for larger programs from the network is based on your network but the program cad would have to be very large to see a difference from local to network.

[[Dy...]]

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I have had them open at the same time but never actually had them running at the same time but i will test that now and give results in a few 🙂

[[Mi...]]

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You're probably right, I'm not likely to get everything I want from this...

Even if the CMMs can't actively share programs at the same time, having duplicate programs in the same network location separated by serial number would still simplify our program upkeep as its easier to copy and paste to a different folder on the same server than to a different PC on the network.

Still probably worth it, as long as it doesn't bring in too many of it's own problems.

[[Ja...]]

I run the same program on two machines at the same time quite often. I have had no issues ever since in Extras-settings-environment-paths, I set the actual values to fixed directory C:\Users\Public\Documents\Zeiss\CALYPSO\workarea\inspections.

[[Th...]]

Pretty much every potential problem has already been covered here. Something to consider, if you've got an IT department to manage this sort of thing, is setting up a robocopy script or standalone program to automatically cascade your network-stored CMM programs down to the local drives of your CMM workstations. High workload has prevented me from actually testing the script I wrote to do this, but with enough planning I don't see any huge downsides, unless someone else has already tried this and run into issues.

[[Dy...]]

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Just tested and they both ran no issues lol 😃

[[Re...]]

We store all of our programs on the network. The only negative that I experienced is that when the network goes down you are unable to load a plan. Our network was down this morning, however I was able to keep executing a plan because I had the plan uploaded last night and kept it open. The PiWeb path stores its data on the local drive so no problem there. However some time in the future I would like to have PiWeb stored to the network in case of a local drive. I have changed the path for PiWeb data to go to the network, but it does not seem to to take hold.

[[Ge...]]

We have a newer machine with a Vast XXT and an older Eclipse with a touch-trigger Renishaw head. I got tired of doing revision updates on two different programs, so I have them both running the same program off the network. No problems. We've also been saving the results from 3 machines to the network since forever with no problems. I can't imagine trying to maintain separate programs for 30+ CMMs, even if it was in the same location.

[[La...]]

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PiWeb Reporting database files won't work on a network drive as far as I know. For access to your database files in a network capacity, it requires PiWeb SBS or Enterprise.

[[Jo...]]

So we used to run all our programs off the network server, but anytime the server would go down or get restarted we were sitting ducks. We finally installed 2TB internal hard drives on our CMM PCs, and our IT department created Robo-copy scripts to copy programs down from the server to these internal hard drives every night at 12am. We used to have issues with programs fighting each other if used at the same time, but now I don't have to worry about it at all. (Funny how I never thought to change where the actuals were stored to the C:/ drive as was suggested above...) So now when I update the programs I don't have to worry if anyone is using the program (that used to cause issues as well "such and such feature did not get selected to run from the feature list, do you want to run it now...") IT made sure a link to the script is on the desktop, so whenever I make changes to the programs, I right click and run the script manually. The only thing I really have to pay attention to is making sure the "protheadpara" file gets updated with the current incremental part number, though I'm sure this isn't as much an issue as seems.

The only down-side so far is when the server does go down the reports and table files get stalled out, as they normally get saved on the server. However, the CMM can continue running without any other interruptions.

[[No...]]

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Good you mention that! I had almost forgotten about this, but one big issue we had with running programs over the network was wrong data in the protheadpara files. For us it was a rather big issue as we run the programs via Autorun on different CMMs (not at the same time) and transmit the results to our SPC software. When we make significant changes to a program, we use a system of revision numbering in the protocol header to mark the changes. If the SPC software receives data with a changed revision, it automatically generates a new version of the part in the database, but the older versions remain active.

The problems arose from the fact that the contents written to the protheadpara file depend on where the program is edited. If I open it on the offline seat and resave, the content of the local protheadpara can make it into the inspection file. Then on another machine the - now wrong - contents of the inspection file can get written to its local protheadpara.
This way, wrong header data sometimes spread over several machines almost like a virus, and some time later we wondered why the heck the data of program X ended up in the wrong database location.

After a long hunt I was finally able to find out what was going on and fixed this nasty error. I installed a batch file that runs whenever a program is opened on any machine, deleting all existing protheadpara files. This way Calypso is forced to always use the data stored (intentionally) in the inspection file.

[[Ch...]]

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What are you using as your trigger to start this batch file?

[[Me...]]

We run over the network but each machine has there own independent folder of programs.
As of now one machine is 7.0 the other two are 6.8. One xxt, rds. The other just xxt so they need to stay separate.
I went back to reread some of your posts. The issues with multiple machines.
Mind bending.
One thing that you people brought to my attention is working when the network is down.
That happened once. It took about 2 hours but I got it up and running. But this post has made me consider the "what if it's more than that."
Ironically I just stumbled upon an external 1 tera ssd nobody is using.
Wiped it clean. Bosses medical records.
I'll copy backups to it so I can load locally. Or run from it.

[[He...]]

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Probably a file called "inspection_post_load.bat" located in the default location for measurement plans. There are a few different names that are triggered at different times (after loading, at the start of the run, after the run and so on).
Bat-files and PCM-files can be used.

To get all the possible names you can press F1 and search for "Reference: Names of external PCM files" and you will get the complete list.

[[Da...]]

HI. Something I uncovered many years ago with a different CMM software, a program should not be run from a network drive on separate CMM's. The software some how stores data in the program as it is running. With mutiple CMM's running the same program, it was sometimes messing up the results. Right now, we do not run program for Calypso from a network drive on multiple CMM's. It is something in the future that may happen. I have not checked with Zeiss to know if a program running on multiple CMMs behaves the same as the other software. Not sure I saw here anyone has checked on that with Zeiss. Just something to consider if more troubles happen.