Warning: Help > Reset All Settings will delete your profiles

[yonkiman]

EDIT: Changed "Process" in title and in body below to the more accurate "Profile".

NOTE/EDIT 2: ALL CAPS in headline to help make sure people notice so this doesn't happen to them, this is not an anti-4.0 post. I'm still excited about all the cool things in 4.0.

I really hope I'm wrong about this and overreacting, but right now I'm not happy.

Since 4.0 and 3.1.1 seemed to be operating and running independently, I thought I'd follow the advice from here (http://joes3dworkbench.blogspot.com/201 ... video.html) and start with a clean slate. So I selected Help/Reset All Settings from the 4.0 menu. It delete all my old profiles from 4.0, but it also deleted every single profile from my 3.1.1 installation! I tried loading several saved 3.1.1. factory files into 3.1.1, but the profiles are gone.

Again, I hope I'm missing something, but it looks like all 20 of my hand-tweaked profiles are gone.

So be careful out there and stay away from Help/Reset All Settings in 4.0.

[upsm]

yeah looks like they can run separately but they share all the data

[dkightley]

Again, I hope I'm missing something, but it looks like all 20 of my hand-tweaked processes are gone.

For the uninitiated.....process are stored in your dynamic workspace...which can be very easily cleared. Any processes that you consider vital should be saved as profiles...where they are saved more permanently...and cannot be zapped!

Even better....and processes/profiles that you consider absolutely essential to ensure you don't die should be exported to .fff files. They will then be super safe..or at least as safe as any file can be on your drive!

The morale of the story....don't keep important things in a dynamic workspace! You wouldn't keep your most precious photos in memory in your camera...or would you?

[mroek]

It seems both versions write to the same subkey in the registry, so they will step on each other's toes if both are used. The new settings in v4 will most likely not be affected by v3 (except probably by a settings reset), but any common settings between versions seems to be read and written by both. So at the very least, I'd avoid running both versions simultaneously.

[yonkiman]

For the uninitiated.....process are stored in your dynamic workspace...which can be very easily cleared. Any processes that you consider vital should be saved as profiles...where they are saved more permanently...and cannot be zapped!

I used the wrong word - what I lost was all my *profiles*. I'm happy to hear they "cannot be zapped!" I hope someone eventually tells me where they are.

Even better....and processes/profiles that you consider absolutely essential to ensure you don't die should be exported to .fff files. They will then be super safe..or at least as safe as any file can be on your drive!

Also good to know. I always found it fairly inconvenient to export profiles to .fff files. I feel that just clicking "Update Profile" should saved the new settings to a file somewhere. Or at most offer a "save config" button. Which is what I *thought* I was doing by carefully saving and backing up factory files.

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The morale of the story....don't keep important things in a dynamic workspace! You wouldn't keep your most precious photos in memory in your camera...or would you?

I'm sure you're trying to be helpful, and I appreciate any help you can provide, but that sentence comes off as super-condescending. In fact, the addition of "...or would you?" makes it just plain insulting. And BTW, it's "moral", not "morale". You wouldn't want to misspell a word in a forum post...or would you?

[darKing]

They are stored in the registry (on Windows)

I'm pretty sure you're f* if you'd really reset to Default.

[smeagollum]

If you have system restore enabled, you might be able to get the registry settings back by restoring to a point before you did the reset. It might also be possible to get at the registry hive with Shadow Explorer (again, provided you have available restore points):

http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

In any case, the key (and subkeys) you want to restore is this one:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Simplify3D

That should return all settings and profiles.

The easiest method might be to use the restore function, then export this key to disk (from within regedit), and then revert the restore (to avoid losing other stuff), and then importing this key again.

[yonkiman]

If you have system restore enabled, you might be able to get the registry settings back by restoring to a point before you did the reset.

Thanks smeagollum. Unfortunately it looks like system restore wasn't enabled on this PC.

Does anyone know why S3D stores all profiles in the Windows Registry (with its opacity, single point of failure, etc.) vs separate .fff files that can easily be backed-up, duplicated, hand-tweaked if needed? It obviously doesn't use the registry for the Linux or Mac versions. Maybe someday they will at least add an "Export All FFF Profiles" option so I can easily transfer and back them up somewhere safe without having to pull down a menu, locating each the profile on a dropdown menu, and saving with a file requester for every profile.

OK, I'm done whining. Back to enjoying all of 4.0's cool new features!