Stomp on a Bug in ANSYS Mechanical R14

Okay, so it’s not the ugly critter in the picture, (that on was found at my house), but the bug in ANSYS R14 can give you the willies just the same. ANSYS, Inc. is working very hard to get the situation remedied, and they will be sending out defect notices shortly.  They provided a quick-fix however, and we wanted to get it out to you as  quickly as possible. So I have done some screen captures while I ran through the fix.

The issue found is that if you close a Mechanical, or Meshing, session and then hit ‘Save’ on the project window, you may lose the contents of your Mechanical database.   The problem has arisen in R14 because ANSYS, Inc. has decreased the start up time of Mechanical by pre-loading it when Workbench is started. When you close Mechanical, it stays open in the background as an empty database. There is a 1-second ‘window of opportunity’ after you close the Mechanical editor and save the project file when the process threads are not fully synchronized.  If you save during this period, the blank session gets saved on top of the good session, and all data is lost.  If you wait longer than a second, there shouldn’t be an issue, but customers have been reporting longer times where they have still lost data.  ANSYS, Inc. is working with those customers to find out what is causing the longer times on their boxes.

Luckily the remedy is simple, and hopefully none of you will have to lose any data.  Since the issue is caused by the pre-loading of Mechanical, the remedy is to simply turn the pre-loading off.  This has to be done from  the Tools > Options menu on the Project window. Just uncheck the Pre-Load box in both the Mechanical and Meshing dialog boxes, and then close Workbench after hitting ‘OK’. The next time you open Workbench, the bug will be neutralized.

I just wish it was that easy for that creepy guy in the picture!