Vico Office R4 7 MR1 Readme_FINAL

8/20/2019 Vico Office R4 7 MR1 Readme_FINAL

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Vico Office

4.7 MR1

Readme

March 14

2014These notes include technical insight for upgrading and optimizing the

installation of Vico Office R4.7 MR1 - This document should be read and

understood clearly by all users of the program.


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Vico Office R4.7 MR1 - Readme Notes Page 1 of 16 March 14, 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The ‘Golden Rule of Upgrades’ .................................................................................................................................... 3

1. General .................................................................................................................................................................. 3

1.1. Previous Version Files................................................................................................................................... 3

1.2. Disk Cleanup Precautions ............................................................................................................................. 3

1.3. Anti-virus Software....................................................................................................................................... 3

1.4. Display Settings ............................................................................................................................................ 3

2. Installation ............................................................................................................................................................ 4

2.1. Networking ................................................................................................................................................... 4

2.2. Administrative Rights ................................................................................................................................... 4

2.3. The Versant Database .................................................................................................................................. 4

2.4. BIM Connections .......................................................................................................................................... 5

3. Things to know in R4.7 MR1 ................................................................................................................................. 5

3.1. Constructability Manager ............................................................................................................................. 5

3.2. Cost Planner ................................................................................................................................................. 5

3.3. Document Controller.................................................................................................................................... 5

3.4. LBS Manager................................................................................................................................................. 6

3.5. Model Register ............................................................................................................................................. 7

3.6. Publishers ..................................................................................................................................................... 8

3.7. Schedule Planner .......................................................................................................................................... 8

3.8. Takeoff Manager .......................................................................................................................................... 9

3.9. Vico Office Client .......................................................................................................................................... 9

3.10. Vico Project Server (VPS).......................................................................................................................... 9

4. R4.7 Feature Additions ....................................................................................................................................... 10

4.1. 3D View ...................................................................................................................................................... 10

4.2. Cost Planner ............................................................................................................................................... 10

4.3. Document Controller.................................................................................................................................. 10

4.4. LBS Manager............................................................................................................................................... 11

4.5. Model Register ........................................................................................................................................... 11

4.3. Schedule Planner ........................................................................................................................................ 11

4.4. Takeoff Manager ........................................................................................................................................ 11


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5. General Best Practices ........................................................................................................................................ 11

5.1. Cost Explorer .............................................................................................................................................. 11

5.2. LBS Manager............................................................................................................................................... 11

5.3. Takeoff Manager ........................................................................................................................................ 12

5.4. Vico Office Client ........................................................................................................................................ 15

6. Database Troubleshooting.................................................................................................................................. 16


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THE ‘GOLDEN RULE OF UPGRADES ’

BACKUP ALL EXISTING PROJECTS

It is fundamentally important that all existing projects get backed up before upgrading to a new installation of

Vico Office. Deployment environments can vary greatly and the safest way to mitigate any data loss occurring

during an upgrade is to backup all of your projects before any new installation of Vico Office!

1. GENERAL

1.1.

PREVIOUS VERSION FILES

All models that are part of projects that were created prior to Vico Office R4.0 have been deactivated to apply a

quantity calculation improvement. This applies to all projects located on the Vico Project Server. Models created

in these earlier versions of Vico Office need to be reactivated after opening the project for the first time.

1.2.

DISK CLEANUP PRECAUTIONS

When running standard Windows Disk Cleanup, or other similar applications to free up disk space, it is almost

certain that all .log files will be deleted from your system. While most Windows .log files are expendable, the

Versant database logs are not!

Permanently deleting them from your system will destroy your Vico Office projects.

1.3.

ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Some Anti-Virus software blocks or slows down the communication between Vico Office and the Vico Project

Server. Exceptions should be added to the Anti-Virus software settings to prevent this – see page 18 of the Vico

Office Installation Guide for these settings.

1.4.

DISPLAY SETTINGS

The 3D View bar appears as “floating” and other parts of the UI may be hidden when changing the size of text

through the Windows Display Settings icons in the Control Panel; use the default Smaller - 100% setting to

prevent this from happening.


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2. INSTALLATION

2.1.

NETWORKING

VERY IMPORTANT: When you use Vico Office in a configuration with separate server and client, make sure that

both server and client(s) systems are updated to the latest version of Vico Office.

2.2.

ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHTS

Installation of Vico Office requires administrator rights and elevated access rights in cases where User Account

Controls (UAC) are enabled; UACs may need to be modified, or turned off, via the Control Panel.

When installing Vico Office while connected to a network domain, the UAC settings may be different from an

offline profile, which can result in changed hardware identification characteristics. The changed hardware

characteristics may result in a “no valid license found” message. Reinstalling your license will solve this issue.

2.3.

THE VERSANT DATABASE

When upgrading from a Vico Office R3.X, the installation should be done over the previous version; also, if this is

not already the case, the R3.3 Vico Project Server needs to be installed before installing R4 on a computer with

existing R3.X projects.


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A new version of the Versant database was introduced in Vico Office R4.0. When installing R4.X (4.0, 4.1, R4.2, 4.6

4.7 or 4.7 MR1) over an older VO version, a backup folder with the old project databases is automatically created.

By default, this backup folder will be placed in the C:\Versant folder

2.4.

BIM CONNECTIONS

In some cases, the installer is unable to detect the folder in which ArchiCad, AutoCAD, Revit and Tekla was

installed on your computer. If this happens, the Office installer allows for selecting the folder manually. All

required files will be copied to the specified folder.

3.

THINGS TO KNOW IN R4 .7 MR1

3.1.

CONSTRUCTABILITY MANAGER

[Fixed] Users can now type directly into all fields without having to double-click to enter some fields

[Fixed] Problems with custom filters in list view that were not persisting after user actions in list view

[Fixed] Deleted issues that were not being fully removed from database and could cause potential error if new

issue with identical code was created

[New] Added tolerance settings to clash detection to help detect ‘soft clashes’ between elements

[New] Exposed Revit ID to property palette so that users can find elements in source application more quickly

[New] Add column presets to list view of Issue Manager , including: Standard, Status and Impact

[New] Added a field selector to card view for user customizations

[New] Optimizations to clash detection algorithm that make second and/or subsequent clash tests faster

[New] Added a warning message when user tries to delete an issue containing linked documents

[New] Made clash detection settings collapsible in user interface for more screen space to be available

3.2.

COST PLANNER

[Fixed] Sporadic crashing that could occur as a result of toggling the display of add-ons from Cost Plan

Components; similarly, fixes were made that could cause problems when removing and re-adding add-ons

from the Cost Plan all together

3.3.

DOCUMENT CONTROLLER

[Fixed] Changing the comparison mode between Slider, Highlight and Overlay no longer resets the view position

of the documents

[New] Support for embedded true type fonts that are part of many PDF documents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueTypehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueTypehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueTypehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType


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[Note] Not all PDFs are created equally and not all fonts are read similarly. We have created and tested

Document Controller using the most common font types but atypical fonts may appear strangely if they

have not been tested yet – please let us know if you find this occurrence!

3.4.

LBS MANAGER

[Note] Location copying was added in R4.7 but requires a specific set of circumstances to work properly –

here is a list of conditions that must be met for location copying to work:

The source node (copy from) has to be a floor or location system node

o The source node cannot be a zone node

The source node (copy from) and destination (copy to) must be under the same parent node, which

refers to a floor split or a location system.

o For example: a zone breakdown from location system 1 cannot be copied across to the

corresponding floor split of location system 2 because each location system is considered to

be a different parent node. The source node (copy from) may only contain zones under it – it cannot include any additional floor

splits under it.

The destination node (copy to) can only be a floor or location system node – it cannot be a zone node.

The destination node (copy to) cannot already have existing zone nodes below it.

[Note] Important to understand: Previous versions of Vico Office included a function that removed unnecessary

nodes from polylines but in some cases it could defect and also remove value-added nodes. (see sketches). In R4.7

this was fixed and Vico Office now only removes the totally unnecessary nodes, which results in the old zone

definitions that do not match the new definitions – steps for resolving this are listed below the sketches:

Condition Sketch Location Definition

‘ Original -

condition #1’

Location A, as defined by LBS:

1, 5, 7, 6 and 4

Location B, as defined by LBS:

2, 5, 7 and 8

Location C, as defined by LBS:

3, 6, 7 and 8


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‘ User refined -

condition #2’

(Polyline splitting B

& C was removed –

location B remains)

Location A, as defined by LBS:

1, 5, 7, 4 and 4

Location B, as defined by LBS:

2, 8, 3, 6, 7 and 5

‘ Vico understood –

condition #2b’

LBS manager no longer

defines the location with the

exact same nodes; it thinks it

has two new locations. Here

they are called Y & Z but they

would be called ‘unnamed

& 2’ in the program – also,

the previous locations of A &

B would appear as empty

(italicized) in the program.

Schedule logic that is looking

for location A & B logic

would fail in this case.

‘ New final -

condition #3’

To resolve this, users should

‘Paint LBS node’ of the Y -

location to the (now empty)

A-location in LBS manager.

Also, location Z should bepainted to the (now empty)

B-location in LBS manager.

Location Y & Z will appear as

empty and can be deleted.

Users must do this before

opening the schedule to

avoid undesired results.

[Note] A workflow summary for properly handling the above scenario would be:

Make sure Schedule Planner remains closed

Reactivate project models

Go to LBS manager and find all nodes which have lost their geometry

Use location painting to assign the (empty/italicized) nodes to the corresponding ‘Unnamed’ (bold) nodes

Delete the unneeded (now italicized) notes

Reactivate the models again (to generate correct quantities)

Open Schedule Planner


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[New] Added a warning dialog indicating that: ‘ project elevation’ cannot not be edited in the LBS manager –

Users should change project bounding box coordinates if they wish to change the project level elevation

3.5.

MODEL REGISTER

[Fixed] A Hang that can occur when doing batch activation process of multiple models

3.6.

PUBLISHERS

[Fixed] An Issue where Revit models appear misaligned because the position tool was used to relocate the model

inside the authoring application and was not being read correctly by Vico Office

[Fixed] Issue causing a crash when activated models were imported into a new project using compare & update

[Fixed] An issue where Revit windows were causing a ‘general exception’ error inside of Vico Office

[New] Support for ArchiCAD 17 publisher

ArchiCAD 17 (AC17) introduced new functionality called ’Building Materials’ which changes the way

models are activated in Vico Office - By default, the Vico Office publisher exports the Building Fill as the

Fill Name to Vico Office. If the element has the Cover Fill option checked, then it is published also; if,

additionally, the Use Fill from Surface option is checked, then the Vectorial fill for the Surface of the

Building Material is published.

o There is an automatic conversion, which changes the names of Composites, Building Materials

and Surfaces when opening models created prior to ArchiCAD 17 inside of the application. Due

to this change, content from Composite activation options change.

Republishing a model from AC17 that was created with older ArchiCAD versions and not

revising the Composite names would change the TOI names that are expected in Vico

Office.

[Note] Revit models that are linked together and published into Vico Office do not always behave predictably.

In some cases, linked models do not respect the filtering constraints that were put on the publishing

view and can result in undesired outputs and/or duplicate quantities. Users are advised to remove the

link between files and publish them separately.

3.7. SCHEDULE P LANNER

[Fixed] A hang that occurred when adding some task driving units in the Task Manager of Vico Office

[Fixed] Task completion information was being prematurely shown in the completion report and could cause a

crash when switching from the Planning Mode and into the Control Mode. Information about current,

actual, predicted and difference states of information has been removed from the completion

report that appears while in the planning mode. Information about the current, actual, predicted and

difference of tasks only appears in the completion report when the project is in control mode to avoid any

further problems or confusion.


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[New] In some extreme cases, Schedule Planner has run out of memory during the save operation and has

corrupted the Vico Office project. A fail-safe was added to the program to validate the schedule planner

file’s stability before integrating it into the Vico database. If a schedule were to run out of memory during

the save process an error message indicating that the file cannot be integrated into the Vico Office

database will appear, so as to avoid a corrupted Vico Office project.

Users are urged to save, close and reopen Schedule Planner periodically when working on large projects

to prevent this fail-safe from having to engage and prohibit the schedule from integrating into Vico Office.

3.8. TAKEOFF MANAGER

[Fixed] Fixed scrolling nuances that can appear when using the new all-in-one Takeoff module

[New] Adapted code so that TOIs which are imported to a new file using Compare &Update will maintain their

relationship to manually assigned 3D elements – it is important to note that: models must first be imported

into new project and then activated; TOIs carrying manually assigned elements must be brought over after

the activation is complete in order for the manual 3D element association to stick with the TOIs.

3.9. VICO OFFICE CLIENT

[Fixed] Multi-user improvements to:

Constructability Manager

Cost Planner

Excel Import

Task Manager

Takeoff Manager

User Interface

[New] Added a warning message to tell the user if the connection to the VPSA has been lost and will subsequently

close the Vico Office project

[Note] Updated the keyboard shortcut dialog throughout the program to reflect recent new functionality

3.10.

VICO PROJECT SERVER (VPS)

[Fixed] Compatible pack issues that could occur when running a networked VPS

[Fixed] A failure in the quick pack function that occurred if the VPS is running a different version from Vico Office

[Fixed] The program’s ability to ‘restore all project using their latest backup’ in the VPSA environment

[New] A mechanism that requires an upgrade to any previous VPS installation to be compatible with MR1


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4.

R4.7 FEATURE ADDITIONS

4.1.

3D VIEW

‘Turn Off Capping’ is used to conceal the red geometric face that represents a split element in the 3D view.

Turning off this capping may make it easier to identify red (deleted) elements in Document Controller; however

users can expect some lag in 3D performance when this overriding feature has been set.

‘Reset 3D View’ has been added to improve the 3D experience, as it quickly restores the 3D view to its native

state after the user is finished working within visual filters that may have been set. The reset will return the

element section, highlight status, and view filters to their default and/or off state.

4.2.

COST PLANNER

Drag and Drop TOQ functionality has been added between TOM and CP, so that TOQs can be sent directly intothe source quantity cell with a single click and drag. Quantities can be brought from the project level of TOM and

will carry their unit of measure. Quantities that are carried over will reveal a new icon when atop the formula

editor cell and will be added to the existing formula by default; pressing and holding the shift key during the

operation will replace the existing quantity.

4.3.

DOCUMENT CONTROLLER

Document Scaling allows users to directly input a scale value onto 2D PDF drawings that have been mapped to a

reference plane. Scaling of documents can be done by right-clicking the reference plane in the 3D window, or by

selecting and right-clicking the document on the reference palette filter. Documents can be multi-selected (using

the Ctrl key in the document register) and allow multiple mappings to a single plane. Traditional drawing scales,such as ¼” = Foot can be put into the dialog to automate the upsizing of drawings from their printed state to

match the 3D models.

Drag and Drop Documents makes it possible to move drawings from the Document Register directly onto

reference planes. Drawings can be selected individually, or in groups, from the register and dropped onto

reference planes seen on the 3D view or within the reference plane palette. Multiple drawings and multiple

versions can now be mapped in a single operation.

Reference Plane Position Details are now visible; the X, Y, Z values of each plane can now be typed in

manually, or altered after initial creation. A dialog will appear during reference plane creation and will allow the

user to type it in manually or visually when hovering into the 3D space. After creation, right-clicking on a referenceplane in the palette would expose the position information and allow the user to override the X, Y, Z information

to move the plane to a more preferable location.


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4.4.

LBS MANAGER

Location Copying makes it possible to copy locations between sibling node levels. This is to say, a zone

breakdown that is created on for a floor split can now be copied to multiple other floors using the right-click

context menu in LBS manager. Location copying requires parent nodes to be identical in order to work.

4.5. MODEL REGISTER

Batch activation was introduced to help automate the new and/or re-activation process of BIM models. During

batch activation, models will be activated one-by-one and consecutively; if activation of one model fails, the

activation of other models should still work correctly.

4.6.

SCHEDULE PLANNER

Static Mode has been added to temporarily pause the connection between the schedule file and the Vico Officedatabase. This serves a valuable purpose on large datasets when it is undesirable to have every Vico Office action

applied directly to the SP file. The toggle icon for this feature can be found in the lower left corner of the SP UI and

synchronizing is on by default. Synchronizing can be turned off to improve the experience when working with

large datasets in SP. Choose the synchronize button to do a onetime update of data, or turn the feature off to

return to constant updating.

Primavera P6 Integration has been improved and now comes as a direct export out of SP. Start and finish dates

all come over from the tasks, as well as the associated calendars. The export is capable of sending multiple

calendars over, including holiday information. Holiday information is sent for two years prior to the project start

and five years after the project finish. Dependency logic is not currently part of the export process.

4.7.

TAKEOFF MANAGER

Tag Functionality in TOM now has complete functionality and allows users to add as much custom information

to a TOI as they may wish. The tag information that is associated with TOIs can be used for validation purposes

within the UI, such as supporting the MPS by adding LOD values to each TOI. The tags values can also be reported

upon in the reporting engine to share the additional information on printed reports.

5. GENERAL BEST PRACTICES

5.1.

COST EXPLORER

Only elements from the active model versions will be isolated or highlighted in the 3D View when selecting a node

representation of a Cost Version within the Cost Explorer view.


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5.2.

LBS MANAGER

Models must always be reactivated after adding or modifying LBS locations and/or nodes; doing so will analyze the

geometry through the new locations and provide proper quantities by location. Failing to do so will result in

quantities that are not calculated per the LBS.

Locations should be made with the fewest polylines possible in LBS manager to avoid “ghost” locations (see sketch

below). Overlapping polylines that are used to represent a single location may produce unpredictable results and

location creation during the model reactivation process.

Correct Method Incorrect Method

5.3.

TAKEOFF MANAGER

Walls that contain window or door elements that span from bottom to top may result in incomplete quantities

in Vico Office, because the Vico Office calculation does not recognize both sides of the window or doorelements as part of the same side of the wall.

“Units of Measurement” should be defined in the Project Settings before inserting data. Changing the “Units

of Measurements” will not update the units of existing Takeoff quantities.

When you select the quantity “Hole Surface Area” for slabs or “Opening Surface Area” for walls, no geometry

will be highlighted in the model but the opening area is correctly calculated.

Quantities for roof elements that have a hole, of which the sides are not perpendicular to the roof’s top and

bottom, may not be correct.


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Figure 4 - Roof element with hole edges not perpendicular

to the roof element's surface.

“Thickness” quantities are not currently calculated for Roof elements and Surface (or Mesh) elements.

When using Revit’s “Solid Element” operations to subtract a volume from a slab, the “Top Surface Area”

that is returned includes the “Top Surface Area” of the element that was used to subtract the volume.

Figure 5 - Sample Slab element with solid

element operation applied to it.

Some predefined Door and Window families from Revit contain a “Height” property that does not match

the standard name for this property or a “Height” property value that equals “.” As a consequence,

“Height” may be missing for instances of these specific Door Window families.

When publishing models from ArchiCAD, geometry of elements on Layers that are not visible at the

moment of publishing to Vico Office will be skipped during the publish operation and result in “Missing

Geometry” notifications in Takeoff Manager.

Slanted wall elements will not return correct surface areas.

When a wall element has been trimmed diagonally at its bottom, there is no bottom edge that is parallel

with the wall’s reference line. As a consequence, none of the sides will be classified as “Reference” or

“Opposite Reference” side. The result is that all vertical surfaces of the wall element are included in the

“Ends Surface Area” quantity.

Figure 6 - Wall element trimmed along its base.

Revit Curtain Wall elements cannot be processed accurately; Takeoff Items that contain this type of

elements will return an incomplete set of Takeoff Quantities. Use of the “Wall” element for Curtain Walls

is recommended.


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The following quantities are missing for stair elements modeled in Revit: “Riser Surface Area,” “Side

Surface Area,” and “Bottom Surface Area.”

Column/Wall issue: when a column element is “embedded” in a wall element (due to a specific setting in

ArchiCAD), the quantities of the column can be incorrect – typically the quantities are larger than

expected. The representation of certain Stair elements is different in Revit 2012 and Revit 2013. As a consequence,

calculated surface areas and volumes in Vico Office may differ.

When Vico Office detects geometry with nested inner loops, it marks the geometry as “incorrect”. This is

treated as partially bad geometry, which will not be able to supply any surface quantities. All the surface

quantities of such geometry will always be 0 and TOQ painting will not be able to change these surface

quantities. In the user interface, the surface TOQ’s that belong to such elements will all have values and

will appear with red text and red exclamation mark.

Figure 7 - "Nested Inner Loops" are created when the edge of an element intersects itself,

thus creating what appear to be holes in 3D.


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When a single Slab element consists of multiple disconnected solid entities with one or more of the solids

fully enclosed in the other solid, and the enclosed solid’s base is on a higher level, the calculation rules will

fail to correctly return the Edge Perimeter.

Figure 8 – Element with multiple solids enclosed in it and base levels on different elevations.

In this example, “Z1” is lower than “Z2”, which will return only the perimeter of the element

on the “Z1” level.

Further information on Vico Office’s calculation rules is provided in the Help file and on our website, via

this link.

5.4.

VICO OFFICE CLIENT

With some Revit models a dialog with an “Inconsistency detected” message appears during publishing of new

model versions; click the “No” button to bypass this message and complete the activation process. The new

version will be published to Vico Office as intended.

To make sure that Vico Office can correctly recognize the types of the elements in a CAD-Duct model, your export

to IFCxml from CAD-Duct should contain the following information:

a. Source (the element’s category)

b. Library (the element’s type)

c. Service (the MEP system)

If any of these properties are missing, elements will be imported as “Objects” in Vico Office and will only return the“Count” quantity. Additionally, before running the IFCE command use the IFCATTR command and verify that the

“Use Default Format” option is selected.

http://www.vicosoftware.com/vico-blogs/guest-blogger/tabid/88454/bid/12475/There-Is-No-Easy-Button-for-Quantity-Takeoff-in-5D-BIM.aspxhttp://www.vicosoftware.com/vico-blogs/guest-blogger/tabid/88454/bid/12475/There-Is-No-Easy-Button-for-Quantity-Takeoff-in-5D-BIM.aspxhttp://www.vicosoftware.com/vico-blogs/guest-blogger/tabid/88454/bid/12475/There-Is-No-Easy-Button-for-Quantity-Takeoff-in-5D-BIM.aspxhttp://www.vicosoftware.com/vico-blogs/guest-blogger/tabid/88454/bid/12475/There-Is-No-Easy-Button-for-Quantity-Takeoff-in-5D-BIM.aspx


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6.

DATABASE TROUBLESHOOTING

6.1.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Problem Cause/Notes Resolution Test for Problem

Vico Office cannot connect

to local or network VPS

(Versant database).

Antivirus or firewall blocks

the connection.

Note: Multiple

firewalls/antivirus can be

present on a machine

Versant database is not

installed properly/’versantd’

service is not running

Set exceptions for the

following files:

C:\VERSANT\8\bin\

versantd.exe

(TCP/IP port 5019)

C:\VERSANT\8\bin\

obe.exe (TCP/IP

port range 6000-

6200)

C:\VERSANT\8\Noti

ficationDaemon.ex

e (TCP/IP port

5088)Reinstall VPS/start ‘versantd’

service

itest –v

(DOS command line function)

Check the Control Panel ->

Administrative tools ->

Services -> VersantD

Vico Office crashes during

startup TCP/IP networking is not set

up properly (DNS name

resolution).

TCP is broken or there is no

network adapter in the

machine

Set up TCP/IP networking

(ask your administrator)

ipconfig

(DOS command line function)

Vico Office drops E7031

error during startup

User must have

permissions to write

Versant DB directory

(usually c:\Versant\db)

Set proper rights on the

Versant DB directory in

Windows Explorer

(C:\Versant\db)

Run the following commands

in Command Prompt:

makedb testdb createdb

testdb

Vico Office R4 7 MR1 Readme_FINAL

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